Marta Horcas-Lopez co-author on review on tumor-associated macrophages.
Tissue Repair PhD student Marta Horcas-Lopez contributes to a review on tumor-associated macrophages
Marta Horcas-Lopez, who is undertaking her PhD research in the lab of Professor Jeffrey Pollard at the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health, is co-author of a review on tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs).
TAMs are becoming a promising target for cancer immunotherapy. Significant efforts have been made to study the detrimental role of TAMs both in vivo and in vitro. However, it remains challenging to isolate these macrophages to study their function in human cancers and there is the need to seek alternatives to address these limitations.
In their review, Heideveld et al focus on the three most relevant approaches to obtain in vitro fully differentiated macrophages i.e. peripheral blood, immortalized cell lines such as THP-1 or human induced pluripotent stem cells. They also provide protocols for the polarization of human macrophages to a TAM-like cells in vitro.