Tsoumakidou published a new Perspective at Nature Reviews Cancer, presenting novel concepts on immune stimulating cancer-associated fibroblasts.
In this Perspective, Tsoumakidou unifies the follicular and non-follicular, non-endothelial stroma of tumours under the ‘peripheral adaptive immune mesenchyme’ framework and positions subsets of CAFs as direct positive regulators of the adaptive immune system. Building on the understanding of cancer antigen presentation by CAFs and the second touch hypothesis, which postulates that full T cell polarization requires interaction with antigen-presenting cells in the non-lymphoid tissue where the antigen resides, she re-designs the ‘cancer-immunity cycle’ to incorporate intratumoural activation of cancer-specific CD4+ T cells.
Tsoumakidou, M. The advent of immune stimulating CAFs in cancer. Nat Rev Cancer (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41568-023-00549-7
