Immune Cell Metabolic Reprogramming in Cancer Development and Therapy

Immune cells play a crucial role in host defense against infection and cancer. Upon encountering danger signals, these cells activate, leading to a modulation in their immune functions. However, recent studies reveal that immune cells also show distinct metabolic changes that impact their immune functions upon activation. These immune cell types include T cells, B cells, NK cells, NKT cells, basophils, neutrophils, dendritic cells, and myeloid-derived suppressor cells in regulating cancer progression. Such metabolic reprogramming and its functional effects significantly impact cancer progression and immunotherapy. Several non-redundant features of the tumor microenvironment facilitate immunosuppression and impede durable clinical remission following immunotherapy. One such feature of the tumor microenvironment is the metabolic communication between cancer cells and their neighboring immune cells, which could determine the amplitude and type of immune responses. This highlights the potential involvement of metabolic crosstalk in immune surveillance and escape by limiting T-cell infiltration and recruiting immunosuppressive immune cells. This emerging aspect of metabolic crosstalk between the various immune and cancer cells needs further exploration to design immunotherapies that modulate the crosstalk to favor anti-tumor immune responses.

This Research Topic aims to provide a forum to discuss in-depth the metabolic composition of the tumor microenvironment, focusing on the nucleotide metabolism contribution to immunosuppression to targeted cancer development and therapy.
We welcome articles covering, but limit to:
- Cancer and immune cell metabolic reprogramming induced by nucleotide metabolic imbalance or deprivation
- Metabolic interaction between cancer and immune cells inucleotides n the tumor microenvironment
- Nucleotide metabolic conditions of the tumor microenvironment that contribute to the immune cell exhaustion phenotype
- Therapeutic intervention to alter the nucleotide metabolic interaction between cancer and immune cells in the tumor microenvironment
- Profiling the nucleotide metabolic alterations of the tumor microenvironment following immunotherapy
- Nucleotide metabolic heterogeneity and functions of the various immune cells in the tumor microenvironment

Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this section and will not be accepted as part of this Research Topic.

Keywords: Nucleotide metabolic reprogramming, Nucleotide metabolic derangements, Tumor microenvironment, Immunosuppressive metabolites

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.