Prognostic Significance of Tumor-Associated Macrophages in Solid Tumor: A Meta-Analysis of the Literature

By Qiong-wen Zhang, Lei Liu, C. Gong, Hua-Shan Shi, Yunhui Zeng, Xiao-ze Wang, Yu-wei Zhao, Yuquan Wei. PLoS ONE, 2012

917 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Purpose Tumor associated macrophages (TAMs) are considered with the capacity to have both negative and positive effects on tumor growth. The prognostic value of TAM for survival in patients with solid tumor remains controversial. Experimental Design We conducted a meta-analysis of 55 studies (n = 8,692 patients) that evaluated the correlation between TAM (detected by immunohistochemistry) and clinical staging, overall survival (OS) and disease free survival (DFS). The impact of M1 and M2 type TAM (n = 5) on survival was also examined. Results High density of TAM was significantly associated with late clinical staging in patients with breast cancer [risk ratio (RR) = 1.20 (95% confidence interval (CI), 1.14–1.28)] and bladder cancer [RR = 3.30 (95%CI, 1.56–6.96)] and with early clinical staging in patients with ovarian cancer [RR = 0.52 (95%CI, 0.35–0.77)]. Negative effects of TAM on OS was shown in patients with gastric cancer [RR = 1.64 (95%CI, 1.24–2.16)], breast cancer [RR = 8.62 (95%CI, 3.10–23.95)], bladder cancer [RR = 5.00 (95%CI, 1.98–12.63)], ovarian cancer [RR = 2.55 (95%CI, 1.60–4.06)], oral cancer [RR = 2.03 (95%CI, 1.47–2.80)] and thyroid cancer [RR = 2.72 (95%CI, 1.26–5.86)],and positive effects was displayed in patients with colorectal cancer [RR = 0.64 (95%CI, 0.43–0.96)]. No significant effect was showed between TAM and DFS. There was also no significant effect of two phenotypes of TAM on survival. Conclusions Although some modest bias cannot be excluded, high density of TAM seems to be associated with worse OS in patients with gastric cancer, urogenital cancer and head and neck cancer, with better OS in patients with colorectal cancer.

Subfields: Immunology, Psychiatry and Mental health, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a929cc3f9fa99ac2ac717a13fc826167965a493c

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Citations in the corpus

Mesenchymal Stem Cell Secretome: Toward Cell-Free Therapeutic Strategies in Regenerative Medicine (2017, background): “In addition, TAM infiltration is associated with poor prognosis in solid tumors, including breast cancer [150,151], thus the relevance of our data showing that hUCESC-CM significantly inhibits and reverts monocyte to macrophage differentiation [21].”
Colony-stimulating factor 1 receptor (CSF1R) inhibitors in cancer therapy (2017, background): “As the intratumoral presence of CSF1R macrophages correlates with poor survival in various tumor types [5, 9], targeting CSF1R signaling in tumor-promoting TAM represents an attractive strategy to eliminate or repolarize these cells.”
IFN-γ from lymphocytes induces PD-L1 expression and promotes progression of ovarian cancer (2015, background): “…multiple inhibitory mechanisms are present, including regulatory T cells (Curiel et al, 2004; Barnett et al, 2010), tumour-associated macrophages (Zhang et al, 2012), myeloidderived suppressor cells (MDSCs) (Godoy et al, 2013) and inhibitory molecules expressed on tumour cells (Kandalaft et al,…”
The Tumor Microenvironment: A Milieu Hindering and Obstructing Antitumor Immune Responses (2020, background): “There is a correlation between TAM high densities with poor overall survival rate in patients with several cancer types except colorectal cancer (54, 55).”
Roles of the immune system in cancer: from tumor initiation to metastatic progression (2018, background): “For example, high levels of tumor-infiltrated T cells correlate with good prognosis in many solid cancers (Clemente et al. 1996; Oldford et al. 2006; Dieu-Nosjean et al. 2008); on the other hand, high levels of macrophage infiltration correlate with a worse prognosis (Zhang et al. 2012; Figure 1.”
Targeting tumor-associated macrophages with anti-CSF-1R antibody reveals a strategy for cancer therapy. (2014, background): “However, tumor types to be treated with RG7155will have to be selected carefully, taking into account that TAMs have been also attributed good prognostic relevance, e.g., in colo- rectal cancer (Zhang et al., 2012). ml RG7155 and/or 10 mg/ml GM-CSF-neutralizing antibody for 6 days.”