Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Apr 24.
Published in final edited form as: Cell. 2021 Mar 4;184(5):1142–1155. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.02.020

Figure 3. Tumor microenvironment targets.

Figure 3.

(A) Tumors are composed of a complex mixture of cancer cells in genetically and phenotypically distinct cell states surrounded by a fibrillar extracellular matrix and a diverse fibroblastic and immune stroma. Current therapies target VEGF to inhibit angiogenesis, disrupt T-cell immune checkpoints with antibody based immunotherapy, disrupt survival signaling pathways that are mediated by cancer associated fibroblasts, and deliver engineered immune cells to eliminate cancer cells. Our understanding of the molecular basis of interactions among cell types remains incomplete and therefore new methods are required to understand the individual and collaborative functions of these various cell populations. (B) Recent technical advances enable primary and metastatic tumors to be deconstructed into their constituent parts and then reassembled in culture with either total immune and fibroblastic stroma or through selective incorporation of molecularly defined stromal cell populations. These assays from a platform to identify new cancer targets and to test candidate therapeutic compounds in a systematic fashion.