REVIEW article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Thoracic Oncology
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1638054
This article is part of the Research TopicReviews in Thoracic OncologyView all articles
The Tricky Effects of TROP2 in Lung Cancer: From Clinical Practice Back to Fundamental Investigations
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Lung Cancer Surgery, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, China
- 2Tianjin Key Laboratory of Lung Cancer Metastasis and Tumor Microenvironment, Tianjin Lung Cancer Institute, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, China
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TROP2, a transmembrane glycoprotein, is overexpressed and plays pivotal roles in diverse epithelial tumors. The differential expression of TROP2 between cancer and normal tissues offers distinct advantages in developing drugs targeting it. Thus, TROP2-targeted antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), including datopotamab deruxtecan and sacituzumab govitecan, present considerable efficacy and safety in multiple cancers. However, in lung cancer, the application of TROP2-targeted ADCs has many limitations and challenges. The current clinical trials have not achieved encouraging results yet. Meanwhile, the expression of TROP2 in lung cancer remains ambiguous, let alone its biological effects and underlying mechanism. The complex features and limited research may slow down the development of TROP2-targeted ADCs in lung cancer. Therefore, we comprehensively reviewed the literature on TROP2 in lung cancer, extending back to basic research from clinical trials. We also combined several preliminary bioinformatics analyses in this review and intended to find some research directions on breaking through these limitations.
Keywords: Trop2, Antibody-drug conjugates, lung cancer, Bioinformatics analysis, molecular mechanism
Received: 30 May 2025; Accepted: 07 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Li, Gao, Li, Zhang and Chen. 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: Jun Chen, Department of Lung Cancer Surgery, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, China
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