REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1688342
Effect of adipocytes on the function and activity of T cells in tumor microenvironment
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Pharmacy, Affiliated Hospital of Shaoxing University, Shaoxing, China
- 2Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, China
- 3First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, China
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The tumor microenvironment (TME) comprises non-cancerous cells, extracellular matrix, and signaling molecules that interact with tumor cells. These dynamic interactions critically influence tumor development, progression, metastasis, and treatment response. Cancer-associated adipocytes (CAAs), as a main component of the tumor-adipose microenvironment (TAME), have various functions, including remodeling the extracellular matrix and interacting with tumor cells or infiltrated leukocytes through a variety of mutual signals. Dysfunctional adipocytes can release different metabolic substrates, adipokines and cytokines to affect the activity and function of immune cells in TME, especially T cells, thus promoting the proliferation, progression, invasion and migration of cancer cells. In this review, we summarize the effects of secretions of adipocytes on the activity and function of different types of T cells in TME, and discuss the possible targets of adipocytes in cancer therapy to provide new ideas for anti-cancer therapy by targeting adipocytes.
Keywords: Tumor microenvironment1, cancer-associated adipocyte2, Immunity3, T cel4, Inflammatory factors5
Received: 19 Aug 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Xu, Ye, Xiong and Li. 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:
Yang Xiong, xiongyang@zcmu.edu.cn
Qiushuang Li, 20163057@zcmu.edu.cn
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.