Many Mini Maps

The environment in and around a tumour is like a hostile school lunch hall, with some cliques clumping together while free spirits and nervous new starters scatter among spare seats. The tumour environment houses cancer cells but also countless immune cells and other materials either co-opted to the cancer’s cause or dragged in as bystanders. Mapping the distribution of these cell types might reveal new lines of approach for treatments. A study placed 23 molecular markers on many non-small cell lung cancer samples (pictured) and found that some protective immune cells cluster together while cells suppressing immune activity mix more evenly. With proximity to cancer cells, the distribution patterns changed, and the team found a link between the cell layouts and survival outcomes, suggesting that these maps could point the way to better understanding of a patient’s tumour microenvironment, more accurate analysis of tumours, and even new forms of treatment.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

Website

• Image adapted from work by Edwin Roger Parra and colleagues
• Departments of Translational Molecular Pathology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, April 2023