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Review
. 2024 Jan 4:19:109-135.
doi: 10.2147/IJN.S441135. eCollection 2024.

TME-Related Biomimetic Strategies Against Cancer

Cheng Peng  1 , Yilin Xu  1 , Jing Wu  1 , Donghai Wu  1 , Lili Zhou  1 , Xinhua Xia  1
Affiliations
Review

TME-Related Biomimetic Strategies Against Cancer

Cheng Peng et al. Int J Nanomedicine. .

Abstract

The tumor microenvironment (TME) plays an important role in various stages of tumor generation, metastasis, and evasion of immune monitoring and treatment. TME targeted therapy is based on TME components, related pathways or active molecules as therapeutic targets. Therefore, TME targeted therapy based on environmental differences between TME and normal cells has been widely studied. Biomimetic nanocarriers with low clearance, low immunogenicity, and high targeting have enormous potential in tumor treatment. This review introduces the composition and characteristics of TME, including cancer‑associated fibroblasts (CAFs), extracellular matrix (ECM), tumor blood vessels, non-tumor cells, and the latest research progress of biomimetic nanoparticles (NPs) based on TME. It also discusses the opportunities and challenges of clinical transformation of biomimetic nanoparticles.

Keywords: biomimetic delivery system; cell membrane-coating; nanoparticles; tumor therapy.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) shows composition of the TME: TME is a complex system, which is divided into cellular and non-cellular components. Cellular components include ECs, CAFs, TAMs, DCs, T cells, Regulatory T cells, B-cells, NK cells, MDSCs etc. Non cellular components include ECM and extracellular cytokines etc. (B) shows the composition of nano carriers modified by cell membrane. At present, cell membranes are mainly studied, including Erythrocyte, Tumor cell, Macrophage, NK cell, Neutrophils etc.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mechanism of therapy for cancer. The composition of TME is complex, with tumor promoting and tumor inhibiting components. Reversing the tumor immunosuppressive microenvironment requires enhancing anti-tumor cell activity (such as enhancing CTLs, DCs, NK cells, T cells, converting M2-TAMs to M1-TAMs) and weakening the influence of immunosuppressive components (such as weakening Tregs and MDSCs activity).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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