Cellular neighborhoods in cancer
Lichun Ma1,2, Barbara Xiong3,4, Meng Liu5
1Cancer Data Science Laboratory, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA. lichun.ma@nih.gov.
Nature Cancer
|January 16, 2026
Summary
Cellular neighborhoods in tumors are key to understanding cancer complexity. This perspective synthesizes methods for defining, classifying, and analyzing these neighborhoods for clinical relevance.
Area of Science:
- Oncology
- Computational Biology
- Systems Biology
Background:
- Cellular neighborhoods, recurring tissue structures with specific cell compositions and interactions, are crucial for understanding tumor ecosystems.
- Advances in spatial omics and computational modeling allow high-resolution mapping of these neighborhoods, revealing their impact on tumor heterogeneity, evolution, and treatment.
- A lack of a unified framework hinders the interpretation of cellular neighborhoods.
Purpose of the Study:
- To synthesize emerging concepts and insights on cellular neighborhoods in cancer.
- To focus on the definition, classification, and computational identification of these neighborhoods.
- To discuss the clinical relevance of cellular neighborhoods.
Main Methods:
- Literature review and synthesis of current research on cellular neighborhoods.
- Discussion of computational approaches for mapping and analyzing spatial omics data.
- Integration of concepts from systems biology and cancer research.
Main Results:
- Emerging framework for defining and classifying cancer cellular neighborhoods.
- Overview of computational tools for identifying and comparing neighborhoods.
- Highlighting the clinical implications of understanding tumor microenvironment composition.
Conclusions:
- A unified approach to studying cellular neighborhoods is essential for advancing cancer research.
- Computational and spatial omics methods provide powerful tools for neighborhood analysis.
- Understanding cellular neighborhoods offers potential for improved cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.
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