New Insights into Endometrial Cancer

Abstract

EC is the most common cancer in the female genital tract in developed countries, and with its increasing incidence due to risk factors, such as aging and obesity, tends to become a public health issue. Although EC is a hormone-dependent neoplasm, there are no recommendations for the determination of steroid hormone receptors in the tumor tissue and no hormone therapy has ever been assessed in the adjuvant setting. Furthermore, its immune environment has been slightly characterized, but recent evidences point out how EC microenvironment may increase self-tolerance by reducing the recruitment of cytotoxic immune cells to the tumor site and/or modifying their phenotype, making these cells no longer able to suppress tumor growth. Here we highlight insights for EC management from diagnosis to a desirable trend of personalized treatment.

Keywords: Natural Killer cells; endometrial cancer; hormone therapy; immune checkpoint inhibitors; molecular classification; steroid receptors.

Figure 1

Endometrial Cancer IHC valuation: The first assessment is for the presence of mismatch repair (MMR); the second for polymerase-ε (POLE) exonuclease domain mutations (EDMs); and the third for protein 53 (p53).