Reshaping Cancer Therapy: Disrupting the Tumor Microenvironment in Solid Tumors

Despite the transformative impact of immune checkpoint inhibitors, relatively few major advances have been made in the treatment of many solid tumors. This limited progress reflects the intrinsic features of these malignancies, which are highly heterogeneous and therefore especially prone to therapeutic resistance, disease recurrence, and immune evasion. In this context, increasing attention has turned to the tumor microenvironment as a major determinant of treatment response and clinical outcome.The tumor microenvironment poses many barriers to effective therapy, including impaired immune cell movement and infiltration, metabolic constraints, hypoxia, stromal and extracellular matrix barriers, and the presence of inhibitory cytokines, immunological checkpoints, and regulatory cell populations. These interconnected systems do not act in isolation; rather, they work together to promote tumor growth, foster disease progression, limit drug delivery and immune activation, and support resistance to treatment. As a result, the tumor microenvironment has emerged not only as an obstacle, but also as a promising therapeutic target in its own right.Nevertheless, multiple strategies are now being developed to overcome these obstacles. Approaches aimed at reprogramming the tumor microenvironment include modulation of suppressive immune populations, remodeling of stromal architecture, normalization of abnormal vasculature, reversal of hypoxic and metabolically hostile conditions, and rational combination strategies designed to enhance the efficacy of immunotherapy, targeted therapy, and other anticancer treatments. A better understanding of these mechanisms may enable more durable and broadly effective therapeutic responses across solid malignancies.This Research Topic aims to bring together work focused on the reprogramming of the tumor microenvironment in solid tumors. It seeks to highlight both the biological complexity of the tumor microenvironment and the therapeutic opportunities that arise from disrupting its tumor-promoting functions. By integrating insights from basic cancer biology, translational immunology, and clinical investigation, this collection will help clarify the major barriers to effective treatment and the strategies being developed to overcome them.Our goal is to provide a comprehensive picture of how targeting the tumor microenvironment may help immunotherapy and other cancer therapies reach their full potential in solid tumors, while also identifying key challenges, emerging concepts, and future directions for the field.Please note: Manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics, computational analysis, or predictions of public databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent clinical or patient cohort, or biological validation in vitro or in vivo, which are not based on public databases) are not suitable for publication in this journal. Topic editors: Juan Esteban Garcia-Robledo, Andres Felipe Cardona, JUAN BAENA Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/74907/reshaping-cancer-therapy-disrupting-the-tumor-microenvironment-in-solid-tumors