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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 May 18.
Published in final edited form as: Adv Biosyst. 2018 Apr 2;2(5):1700221. doi: 10.1002/adbi.201700221

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Cellular influences involved in the switch from benign neoplasm to malignant growth in GBM. Dormant tumors are regulated by microenvironmental mechanisms including a lack of vasculature, limited supply of nutrients and oxygen, and recognition by nearby cell types such as fibroblasts, natural killer (NK) cells, and macrophages through tumor-associated antigen (Ag) presentation. Tumor cells can evade the body’s immune system response by recruiting immune suppressing tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) and triggering a protumorigenic state within the microenvironment. Treg cells and myeloid-deprived suppressor cells (MDSCs) recruited by TAMs release anti-inflammatory cytokines to suppress immune cell activity. ECM remodeling by tumor cells creates a local stiffness gradient in response to aberrant ECM composition.