Neutrophil plasticity in the tumor microenvironment.

By Morgan A. Giese, Laurel E. Hind, A. Huttenlocher. Blood, 2019

647 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Neutrophils act as the body's first line of defense against infection and respond to diverse inflammatory cues, including cancer. Neutrophils display plasticity, with the ability to adapt their function in different inflammatory contexts. In the tumor microenvironment, neutrophils have varied functions and have been classified using different terms, including N1/N2 neutrophils, tumor-associated neutrophils, and polymorphonuclear neutrophil myeloid-derived suppressor cells (PMN-MDSCs). These populations of neutrophils are primarily defined by their functional phenotype, because few specific cell surface markers have been identified. In this review, we will discuss neutrophil polarization and plasticity and the function of proinflammatory/anti-inflammatory and protumor/antitumor neutrophils in the tumor microenvironment. We will also discuss how neutrophils with the ability to suppress T-cell activation, referred to by some as PMN-MDSCs, fit into this paradigm.

Subfields: Immunology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/140cb5cf0707d3f49887da8351bfdcf3aa5d31c4

Citations in the corpus

• Unraveling the Role of Tumor-Infiltrating Immune Cells in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma: Implications for Antitumor Immune Responses and Immunotherapy (2025, unknown): “Similarly to macrophages, tumor associated-neutrophils (TANs) can exhibit opposing functions depending on the context, with either antitumoral or protumoral effects through direct and indirect mechanisms [24].”