Opportunities and challenges of proximity labeling for microbe-host cell interactions in tumor microenvironment

In the tumor immune microenvironment, microbes promote tumor progression and metastasis by invading host cancer cells. Blocking these interactions is expected to provide new strategies for inhibiting tumor progression and metastasis, as well as opening up new avenues for immunotherapy. However, technological means of studying the interaction between microorganisms and host cancer cells are still limited. Proximity labeling, a widely used method for analyzing biomolecular and cellular interactions, has the potential to analyze microbe-host cell interactions quantitatively, uncovering the key factors that influence these interactions within the tumor immune microenvironment in order to control tumor initiation and progression. Furthermore, proximity labeling based strategies can be applied to high-throughput drug screening aimed at disrupting pathogenic microbe-host interactions, contributing to the development of therapeutics against advanced and metastatic tumors. This paper provides a systematic review of the topic, introducing cutting-edge microbiological mechanisms that have attracted the attention of oncologists.