Stromal remodeling regulates dendritic cell abundance and activity in the tumor microenvironment.

Stimulatory type 1 conventional dendritic cells (cDC1s) engage in productive interactions with CD8 effectors along tumor-stroma boundaries. The paradoxical accumulation of "poised" cDC1s within stromal sheets is unlikely to simply reflect passive exclusion from tumor cores. Drawing parallels with embryonic morphogenesis, we hypothesized that invasive margin stromal remodeling generates developmentally conserved cell fate cues that regulate cDC1 behavior.

Versican and Versican-matrikines in Cancer Progression, Inflammation, and Immunity.

Versican is an extracellular matrix proteoglycan with key roles in multiple facets of cancer development, ranging from proliferative signaling, evasion of growth-suppressor pathways, regulation of cell death, promotion of neoangiogenesis, and tissue invasion and metastasis. Multiple lines of evidence implicate versican and its bioactive proteolytic fragments (matrikines) in the regulation of cancer inflammation and antitumor immune responses. The understanding of the dynamics of versican deposition/accumulation and its proteolytic turnover holds potential for the development of novel immune biomarkers as well as approaches to reset the immune thermostat of tumors, thus promoting efficacy of modern immunotherapies.