Editorial: Inflammatory tumor microenvironment: role of cytokines and virokines in breast cancer progression and metastasis

Abstract

Various factors contributing to breast cancer progression and metastasis (Feng et al., 2018; Park et al., 2022). One of these factors is the presence of inflammatory tumor microenvironment (TME), which composed of cellular components (e.g., cancer cells, immune cells, endothelial cells, fibroblasts, mast cells) and non-cellular components (e.g., extracellular matrix proteins, cytokines, chemokines, signal molecules), and it differs significantly from the normal tissue microenvironment in terms of low vascular density, hypoxia, weak acidity, and reducibility (Zarrilli et al., 2020). Breast cancer cells control the function of TME components via the expression of cytokines that can increase self-proliferation, growth, and treatment resistance in an autocrine form, and encourage recruitment, activation, and differentiation of other cells in the TME in a paracrine approach as IL-6, IL-8, and even VEGF (Malla and Kiran, 2022; Nengroo et al., 2022; Habanjar et al., 2023).