Liquid biopsy has emerged as a powerful non-invasive tool in precision oncology, providing real-time insights into tumor evolution, host immune responses, and dynamic changes in the tumor immune microenvironment. By enabling minimally invasive sampling, it can overcome several limitations of conventional tissue biopsy. This review summarizes the major biological sources and components of liquid biopsy, including circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), circulating tumor cells (CTCs), exosomes, and circulating immune cells, and discusses their value as dynamic indicators of interactions during cancer immunotherapy. Particular attention is given to immune-related biomarkers associated with immune checkpoints, immunosuppressive mechanisms, and immune escape, including circulating immune cell populations, and inflammatory cytokine profiles. We further examine their potential applications in predicting treatment response, monitoring immune-related adverse events, assessing minimal residual disease, and detecting acquired resistance. In addition, recent technological advances that are accelerating the clinical translation of liquid biopsy are highlighted, including multi-omics integration, microfluidic platforms. These approaches have improved the sensitivity, accuracy, and multidimensional characterization of tumor- and immune-derived biomarkers. Nevertheless, biological heterogeneity, limited assay standardization, and the lack of large-scale prospective validation studies continue to restrict widespread clinical implementation. Overall, immune-related biomarkers detected through liquid biopsy offer considerable potential for the longitudinal monitoring of the tumor immune microenvironment and may improve non-invasive cancer diagnosis, therapeutic monitoring, and personalized immunotherapy in the era of precision oncology.
Lai Wen, Xin-Hui Wang, Jin-Ming Liu et al.· Frontiers in Cell and Develo...· 0 citations
Tumor glycolysis reprogramming, characterized by the “Warburg effect,” has emerged as a critical hallmark of cancer progression and therapeutic resistance. Increasing evidence indicates that enhanced glycolytic activity not only supports rapid tumor growth by sustaining ATP production and biosynthetic demands, but also profoundly contributes to the development of chemoresistance. In resistant tumors, glycolysis-driven metabolic adaptation promotes energy homeostasis, maintains redox balance, enhances DNA damage repair, suppresses apoptosis, and supports cancer stemness, thereby reducing the cytotoxic efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents. Moreover, aberrant glycolytic metabolism extensively remodels the tumor microenvironment (TME) through lactate accumulation, extracellular acidification, hypoxia maintenance, immune suppression, and metabolic crosstalk with stromal cells, collectively facilitating tumor survival and therapeutic tolerance. Importantly, targeting glycolytic pathways has shown promising potential in restoring chemosensitivity and enhancing the efficacy of conventional chemotherapy in multiple malignancies. In this review, we systematically summarize the role of glycolytic reprogramming in maintaining resistant tumor cell metabolic homeostasis, regulating the chemoresistant TME, and driving molecular mechanisms underlying chemotherapy resistance. We further discuss current therapeutic strategies targeting glycolysis and their potential clinical applications for overcoming chemoresistance. A deeper understanding of glycolysis-mediated metabolic plasticity may provide novel insights into precision metabolic intervention and combination therapy in cancer treatment.
Zhongyi Tan, Lai Wen, Hewen Guan et al.· Frontiers in Cell and Develo...· 0 citations
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