A recent review out this month in the prestigious journal Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, discussing “Macrophages as tools and targets in cancer therapy”. The group of authors, coordinated by Professor Alberto Mantovani, at Humanitas Research Hospital and featuring one of our I-PCC members, Dr. Federica Marchesi, summarizes current strategies aimed at therapeutically targeting macrophages in the tumor microenvironment.

The landscape of anticancer strategies has been profoundly modified in the last few years, with continuous efforts aimed at complementing current therapeutic options directed against tumor cells with new approaches targeting immune cells infiltrating tumor tissues. These new approaches, collectively named Immunotherapies, have the potential to fight cancer from within, stimulating or reprogramming the patient’s immune system to attack the tumor. Among immunotherapies, the best known are probably checkpoint inhibitors, which have shown durable responses in some tumor types, such as lung cancer and melanoma. In this review, Dr. Federica Marchesi and colleagues focus on macrophages, abundant immune cells in human cancer tissues, mostly engaged in pro-tumor responses, but ideal cells to reprogrammed due to their peculiar versatility. Macrophage-centered therapeutic strategies have the potential to complement and synergize with currently available tools in the oncology armamentarium.

As we learn day by day, pancreatic cancer is an aggressive tumor, characterized by a compromised immune system that does little to control the growth of malignant cells. The attention is now focused on the possibility that new immune-based approaches, such as the ones targeting macrophages may change this scenario.

Here the link to the paper: https://rdcu.be/c7inj

Mantovani, A., Allavena, P., Marchesi, F. et al. Macrophages as tools and targets in cancer therapy. Nat Rev Drug Discov 21, 799–820 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41573-022-00520-5