Community Series in Tumor Microenvironment and Metabolic Reprogramming in Cancer: Metabolic Targets for Immunotherapy

This Research Topic is the third volume of the “Tumor Microenvironment and Metabolic Reprogramming in Cancer” Community Series. Please see Vol.I & Vol.II


Metabolic reprogramming serves as a critical hallmark in the evolution of malignant tumors, characterizing the transition from normal to precancerous states and eventually to metastatic conditions. Such reprogramming involves significant changes in both metabolic phenotype and dependency that are crucial during cancer development. As tumor cells progress, they autonomously modify their metabolic pathways to meet the heightened needs for bioenergy, biosynthesis, and oxidative stress management, essential for prolific growth and survival.

The tumor microenvironment (TME), constituting the non-cancerous cells and their secretions within a tumor, plays a pivotal role in driving these metabolic transformations. The dynamic interplay between the tumor cells and their surrounding microenvironment fuels cancer initiation, progression, metastasis, and therapeutic responses.

This Research Topic aims to elucidate the complex relationships between tumor metabolic reprogramming and the TME.

The focus will be on unraveling how cancer cells manipulate the TME to support their metabolic needs and concurrently suppress the anti-tumor immune response.

By examining how the competition for nutrients and alteration of metabolic fitness impact tumor-infiltrating immune cells, this topic seeks to deepen the understanding of the reciprocal effects between cancer metabolism and immune evasion.

Furthermore, it aims to explore the broader implications of these interactions on cancer progression and response to treatments

To gather further insights into these critical interactions, we welcome articles that not only span a variety of malignant tumor types—including gastric, lung, colorectal, melanoma, pancreatic, and liver cancer—but also probe into the development of gastrointestinal tumors and pivotal regulatory networks within the TME using multi-omics approaches.

We encourage submissions of original research, reviews, and mini-reviews, focusing on, but not limited to, the following themes:
o Metabolic changes in various cancer types
o Role of the TME in cancer metabolic strategies
o Impact of metabolic reprogramming on immune cell function within tumors
o Key molecular pathways facilitating tumor metabolic adaptation
o Multi-omics analysis of TME influences on tumor metabolism

Manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by robust and relevant validation (clinical cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this topic.