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Updated: Oct 18, 2025

Modeling Oral-Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma in 3D Organoids
Published on: December 23, 2022
Tumor Microenvironment of Esophageal Cancer
Lars M Schiffmann1, Patrick S Plum1, Hans F Fuchs1
1Department of General, Visceral, Cancer and Transplantation Surgery, Faculty of Medicine with University Hospital Cologne, University of Cologne, 50931 Cologne, Germany.
Abstract:
Esophageal cancer is among the top ten most deadly cancers worldwide with adenocarcinomas of the esophagus showing increasing incidences over the last years. The prognosis is determined by tumor stage at diagnosis and in locally advanced stages by response to (radio-)chemotherapy followed by radical surgery. Less than a third of patients with esophageal adenocarcinomas completely respond to neoadjuvant therapies which urgently asks for further strategies to improve these rates. Aiming at the tumor microenvironment with novel targeted therapies can be one strategy to achieve this goal. This review connects experimental, translational, and clinical findings on each component of the esophageal cancer tumor microenvironment involving tumor angiogenesis, tumor-infiltrating immune cells, such as macrophages, T-cells, myeloid-derived suppressor cells, and cancer-associated fibroblasts. The review evaluates the current state of already approved concepts and depicts novel potentially targetable pathways related to esophageal cancer tumor microenvironment.
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