What we need in colorectal cancer research, and why?

Abstract

Cancer is a complex disease that includes tumour and healthy cells surrounding and infiltrating the tumour. During cancer development, tumour cells release many extracellular signals in an autocrine and paracrine way, producing deep phenotypic changes in the surrounding cells, becoming protumoral actors. The entire entity composed of tumour cells and the recruited elements is known as the tumour microenvironment. Immune cells, fibroblasts and endothelial cells, mainly with the extracellular matrix, are the most common elements in different cancer types and coexist in a complex balance of protumoral and antitumoral factors. In this context, the spatial disposition of the tumour microenvironment elements is crucial to knowing the role of each one in the disease development, and the multiplex spatial technology is the way to map the tumours. The combination of spatial study with transcriptomic, proteomic, and epigenomic studies is the most modern tool in the hands of cancer researchers, and it has opened a new era in the study of cancer biology.