Chemokine-Cytokine Networks in the Head and Neck Tumor Microenvironment

Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) are aggressive diseases with a dismal patient prognosis. Despite significant advances in treatment modalities, the five-year survival rate in patients with HNSCC has improved marginally and therefore warrants a comprehensive understanding of the HNSCC biology. Alterations in the cellular and non-cellular components of the HNSCC tumor micro-environment (TME) play a critical role in regulating many hallmarks of cancer development including evasion of apoptosis, activation of invasion, metastasis, angiogenesis, response to therapy, immune escape mechanisms, deregulation of energetics, and therefore the development of an overall aggressive HNSCC phenotype. Cytokines and chemokines are small secretory proteins produced by neoplastic or stromal cells, controlling complex and dynamic cell–cell interactions in the TME to regulate many cancer hallmarks. This review summarizes the current understanding of the complex cytokine/chemokine networks in the HNSCC TME, their role in activating diverse signaling pathways and promoting tumor progression, metastasis, and therapeutic resistance development.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  International Journal of Molecular Sciences

• Publication date

  2021-04-27

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3390/ijms22094584PMID 33925575PMCID 8123862
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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