The critical role of macrophages in ovarian cancer treatment

Abstract

The occurrence of and poor prognosis associated with ovarian cancer (OC) pose a serious threat to the health of middle-aged and elderly women. Thus, there is an urgent need to understand the pathogenesis of OC and establish effective therapeutic measures. The OC microenvironment is thought to facilitate malignancy, as well as close relationships among several types of cells. Macrophages are known to be present in the OC microenvironment. They are usually the M1 pro-inflammatory or M2 anti-inflammatory subtype and contribute to the microenvironment via secreting cytokines. The poor prognosis associated with OC is closely related to the negative regulation of M2 macrophage polarization, which contributes to the immune escape of tumor cells and maintains the malignant growth and distant metastasis of OC cells. In this review, we have focused on the involvement of macrophages in OC during the aging process and the macrophage-based therapeutic strategies for OC.

Keywords: Ovarian cancer, macrophage polarization, ageing, tumour associate micro-environment