REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1625814
This article is part of the Research TopicBreaking Barriers: New Frontiers in Immunotherapy for Resistant CancersView all 3 articles
Unveiling Mitochondrial Transfer in Tumor Immune Evasion: Mechanisms, Challenges, and Clinical Implications
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Clinical Laboratory, First Affiliated Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China
- 2Department of Paediatrics, First Affiliated Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China
- 3First Affiliated Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China
- 4Cancer Center, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China
- 5Department of Paediatrics, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China
- 6Department of Clinical Laboratory, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Mitochondrial transfer, the intercellular transmission of mitochondria via tunneling nanotubes(TNTs), extracellular vesicles(Evs), or cell fusion, has emerged as a critical mechanism in cancer progression. Increasing evidence suggests that this phenomenon not only supports tumor cell metabolism and drug resistance but also contributes to immune evasion, a hallmark of cancer.This study aims to systematically explore the intellectual structure, research hotspots, and emerging trends of mitochondrial transfer in tumor immune evasion using bibliometric and visualization tools.Publications from 2003 to 2025 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. CiteSpace and VOSviewer were used to analyze annual outputs, co-occurring keywords, citation bursts, clustering patterns, and co-cited references.A total of 124 records were analyzed. The number of publications increased sharply after 2017, indicating growing research interest. Key terms such as "tunneling nanotubes," "mitochondrial transfer," and "immune escape" were frequently co-mentioned. Although "immune escape" is retained here to reflect the exact terminology used in the bibliometric database (Web of Science Core Collection), the manuscript text consistently adopts the term "immune evasion" for conceptual clarity and terminological standardization.Timeline cluster analysis identified several sustained hotspots, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML), stromal cells, and the cancer microenvironment. Citation burst analysis revealed emerging attention toward "expression," "stem cells," and "tumor microenvironment" in recent years.Mitochondrial transfer has transitioned from a structural phenomenon to a key immunological modulator in cancer. This bibliometric analysis highlights its central role in immune escape evasion and identifies future research directions for therapeutic exploitation.
Keywords: Mitochondrial transfer, tumor immune evasion, Tumor Microenvironment, immunology, bibliometric analysis
Received: 09 May 2025; Accepted: 19 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Shan, Wang, Wang, Li, Yang and Guo. 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: Rui Guo, Department of Clinical Laboratory, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.