In this review, we examined how the tumor microenvironment influences the effects of radiation and how we can enhance the antitumor effects of radiation therapy by modifying the tumor microenvironment.
Paradoxically, the expression of SASP/SMS by senescent cells can also facilitate cancer progression by modifying the tissue microenvironment [ 11].
Disease prevention may also be possible by modifying the fetal microenvironment to reduce the penetrance of Hirschsprung disease-causing mutations.
Clinical trials have shown that zoledronic acid also reduces breast cancer recurrence in bone; potentially by modifying the bone microenvironment surrounding disseminated tumour cells.
Importantly, this suggests that age-related impairments in macrophage phagocytosis could be reversible and as such could be targeted therapeutically, either directly or by modifying the tissue microenvironment.
The strong correlation with poor vascularization and the hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α), a marker of hypoxic tumors, indicates that NHERF1 expression might play an important role in driving metastatic progression by modifying the tumor microenvironment [ 20].
Several groups have tried to improve the virus spread in the tumour by modifying the tumour microenvironment to decrease the extracellular matrix (ECM) component with decorin (Choi et al, 2010), hyaluronidase (Ganesh et al, 2008), relaxin (Kim et al, 2006) and proteases such as metalloproteinase-9 (Hong et al, 2010), collagenase/dispase and trypsin (Kuriyama et al, 2000; McKee et al, 2006).
It may be that modifying the microenvironment by altering the expression of other ECM components may be sufficient to induce the resolution of such aberrant tissue-repair processes, which can lead to conditions such as fibrosis.
Because CD151 is primarily expressed in the mammary myoepithelial cells and the PyMT tumors arise from luminal epithelial cells in the mammary gland where CD151 has reduced expression, it is tempting to speculate that Cd151 deletion could affect tumor development indirectly through the microenvironment, by modifying the phenotype of the myoepithelial cells.
This treatment also reduced tumour growth and modified the microenvironment by reducing PGE2, VEGF and NO production.
