Metabolic Diversity of Tumor-infiltrating T Cells as Target for
Anti-immune Therapeutics
- Peipei Li,
- Fangchao Li,
- Yanfei Zhang,
- Jingjing Li
Abstract
Tumor-infiltrating T cells are promising drug targets to modulate the
tumor microenvironment. However, tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes, as
central targets of cancer immunotherapy, show considerable heterogeneity
and dynamics across tumor microenvironments and cancer types that may
fundamentally influence cancer growth, metastasis, relapse, and response
to clinical drugs. The T cell heterogeneity not only refers to the
composition of subpopulations but also divergent metabolic states of T
cells. Comparing to the diversity of tumor-infiltrating T cell
compositions that have been well recognized, the metabolic diversity of
T cells deserves more attention for precision immunotherapy. Single-cell
sequencing technology enables panoramic stitching of the tumor bulk,
partly by showing the metabolic related gene expression profiles of
tumor-infiltrating T cells at a single-cell resolution. Therefore, we
here discuss T cell metabolism reprogramming triggered by tumor
microenvironment as well as the potential application of metabolic
targeting drugs. The tumor-infiltrating T cells metabolic pathway
addictions among different cancer types are also addressed in this brief
review.