REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1677441
This article is part of the Research TopicImmunotherapy Resistance in Solid Tumor: Intrinsic Characteristics of Cancer Cells and Tissue Microenvironment FactorsView all articles
Macrophages and neutrophils in ovarian cancer microenvironment
Provisionally accepted
- Gynecology & Obstetrics/ Oncology/ Pathology, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States
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
Ovarian cancer (OC) remains one of the most aggressive gynecological malignancies, with a five-year survival rate below 45% despite the recent advances in the introduction of targeted therapy. Moreover, immunotherapy, such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, does not improve the survival of OC patients. Lack of sufficient knowledge in understanding the complexity of the tumor microenvironment likely confers the treatment ineffectiveness. Recently, tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) and tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) have garnered research attention as they shape the tumor immune microenvironment, which plays a crucial role in disease progression and treatment response. This article reviews the complex roles of these innate immune cells in OC progression. TAMs represent a significant component of the immune infiltrate in OC, exhibiting considerable functional plasticity and can shift between anti-tumoral (M1) and pro-tumoral (M2) phenotypes. M2-like TAMs typically predominate in the tumor microenvironment, which aids in the development of immune suppression and disease progression. They also contribute to chemoresistance and metastasis; hence, their presence in tumors is associated with a worse prognosis. TANs, like TAMs, exhibit N1/N2 polarization and influence tumor progression through the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps. Understanding the biological interactions between various immune cells and cancer cells may offer new therapeutic opportunities. This review sheds light on the dynamic ecological transformation of the OC tumor microenvironment and highlights the potential of targeting TAM/TAN-mediated processes to improve OC treatment outcomes.
Keywords: tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), Tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs), ovarian cancer, Tumor Microenvironment, Immunothearpy
Received: 31 Jul 2025; Accepted: 23 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cheng, Lin, Wu, Shih and Wang. 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: Tian-Li Wang, tlwang21212@yahoo.com
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.