REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1588019
PKM2 orchestrates tumor progression via metabolic reprogramming and MDSCs-Mediated immune suppression in the tumor microenvironment
Provisionally accepted
- 1Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China
- 2Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
- 3First People's Hospital of Jingzhou, Jingzhou, Hubei Province, China
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The tumor microenvironment (TME) is a complex system, in which the energy metabolism of tumor cells plays a key role in the occurrence, development and metastasis of tumors. In the TME, the energy supply of tumor cells mainly comes from glycolysis. This metabolic reprogramming phenomenon is usually called the Warburg effect. Despite the abundance of oxygen, tumor cells still preferentially utilize the glycolytic pathway to meet their bioenergetic demands. Pyruvate kinase (PK), as a key enzyme in glycolysis, plays an important role in the regulation of energy metabolism in tumor cells. Among them, pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) is highly expressed in tumors and promotes the release of cytokines by tumor cells, thereby recruiting myeloidderived suppressor cells (MDSCs). These cytokines bind to the surface receptors of MDSCs, activate related signaling pathways, and up-regulate the expression of cathepsin cysteine proteases. This process subsequently inhibits the activity of T cells, thereby affecting tumor development.
Keywords: Tumor Microenvironment, Glycolysis, Pyruvate kinase M2 type, cysteinecathepsins, Cathepsins, myeloid-derived suppressor cells, T cell
Received: 05 Mar 2025; Accepted: 31 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Qin, Zhang, Peng, Wu and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Wenxi Liu, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China
Zengxan Qin, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, Hubei Province, China
Yanhua Zhang, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China
Xiaochun Peng, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China
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