The Tumor Microenvironment: A New Frontier

The tumor microenvironment is a battleground, I was once told. But as I become more cognizant of the intricacies associated with it, I began to realize that this is indeed true. The definition is exactly as the name sounds. It is defined as the interactions between malignant and non transformed cells.

So why would this be important?

As researchers from Yale Medical School point out, any insight into tumor microenvironments can provide an immense amount of detail in regards to a tumor's functionality - how it operates and continues to gain access to resources, allowing it to grow. One of the facets to tumor microenvironments is analyzing the ability of cancerous cells to manipulate other bodily systems, such as fibroblasts, in order to not only survive, but thrive. In the tumor microenvironment, the cells involved include those from the immune system, lymphatics, pericytes, and sometimes adipocytes. These cells all have complex interactions within the tumor microenvironment, that have yet to be discovered.

An interesting area of research currently going on in the United States and throughout the world involves the idea of angiogenesis in the tumor microenvironment. Specifically, malignant tumors (harmful for the body) require blood constantly, as it carries nutrients, allowing the tumor to grow, and eventually spread, known as metastasis. Cancers have the unique ability to go through angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels which lead directly to the tumor to support its life. This is done through signals that cancer cells release in the tumor microenvironment, such as transcription factors, that induce these vessels to form. A long term goal of tumor microenvironment research is to identify ways which these transcription factors can be inhibited, in order to effectively stop blood flow to tumors. Thus, a malignant tumor would be physically "choked" of the nutrients it so desperately needs, causing the cancer to slowly die away. The are of study is quite interesting, and will continue to make dents in the field of cancer research.

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