MINI REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Molecular Innate Immunity
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1677839
This article is part of the Research TopicMulti-Omics Interrogation of Tumor-Associated Macrophages: Paving the Way for Next-Generation Cancer ImmunotherapiesView all articles
Advance in therapies Targeting Tumor-Associated Macrophages in Ovarian Cancer
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Gynecological Oncology, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130021, China, Changchun, China
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Ovarian cancer remains the deadliest gynecologic malignancy, with its aggressive progression and therapeutic resistance heavily influenced by the tumor microenvironment (TME). Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), the predominant immune infiltrates in OC, play pivotal roles in metastasis, immunosuppression, and chemoresistance by adopting a pro-tumoral M2 phenotype. Despite promising preclinical results, clinical translation faces challenges, such as on-target toxicity and incomplete understanding of TAM ontogeny in humans. This review summarizes the origins, heterogeneity, and functional plasticity of TAMs, emphasizing their mechanistic contributions to OC progression through epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), angiogenesis, and immune evasion. We outline the emerging evidence that TAMs drive platinum resistance via exosomal signaling and metabolic reprogramming, underscoring TAMs as central mediators of OC pathogenesis and treatment paradigms.
Keywords: ovarian cancer, Tumor-associated macrophages, Tumor Microenvironment, Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition, chemoresistance, TAM polarization
Received: 01 Aug 2025; Accepted: 01 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Ma, Dai, Wang and Yue. 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: Ying Yue, Department of Gynecological Oncology, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130021, China, Changchun, China
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