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Review
. 2021 Sep 10:11:744889.
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2021.744889. eCollection 2021.

The Stromal and Immune Landscape of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma and Its Implications for Precision Medicine Targeting the Tumor Microenvironment

Lanqi Gong  1   2 , Dora Lai-Wan Kwong  1   2 , Wei Dai  1   2 , Pingan Wu  3 , Yan Wang  4 , Anne Wing-Mui Lee  1   2 , Xin-Yuan Guan  1   2
Affiliations
Review

The Stromal and Immune Landscape of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma and Its Implications for Precision Medicine Targeting the Tumor Microenvironment

Lanqi Gong et al. Front Oncol. .

Abstract

The evolution of the tumor microenvironment (TME) is a cancer-dependent and dynamic process. The TME is often a complex ecosystem with immunosuppressive and tumor-promoting functions. Conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy, primarily focus on inducing tumor apoptosis and hijacking tumor growth, whereas the tumor-protective microenvironment cannot be altered or destructed. Thus, tumor cells can quickly escape from extraneous attack and develop therapeutic resistance, eventually leading to treatment failure. As an Epstein Barr virus (EBV)-associated malignancy, nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is frequently infiltrated with varied stromal cells, making its microenvironment a highly heterogeneous and suppressive harbor protecting tumor cells from drug penetration, immune attack, and facilitating tumor development. In the last decade, targeted therapy and immunotherapy have emerged as promising options to treat advanced, metastatic, recurrent, and resistant NPC, but lack of understanding of the TME had hindered the therapeutic development and optimization. Single-cell sequencing of NPC-infiltrating cells has recently deciphered stromal composition and functional dynamics in the TME and non-malignant counterpart. In this review, we aim to depict the stromal landscape of NPC in detail based on recent advances, and propose various microenvironment-based approaches for precision therapy.

Keywords: immune regulation; nasophanrygeal carcinoma; precision medicine; single-cell sequencing; tumor microenvionment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) The 5-year prevalence of NPC incidences around the globe from 2015-2020. (B) The geographical distribution of NPC incidences in Asia, 2020. (C) The summary of the NPC microenvironment and focuses of the review.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The schematic illustration of cell recruitment and cell-cell interactions in the NPC microenvironment.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The stromal landscape of NPC at a glance and proposed treatment strategies targeting TME-infiltrating cells.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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