TAMing immunity through an unexpected source

Ian Vogel; Sagar P Bapat

doi:10.1016/j.ccell.2025.04.004

TAMing immunity through an unexpected source

Cancer Cell. 2025 Jun 9;43(6):1002-1004. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2025.04.004. Epub 2025 May 1.

Authors

Ian Vogel¹, Sagar P Bapat²

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), Università della Svizzera italiana, Bellinzona, Switzerland.
² Department of Laboratory Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA. Electronic address: sagar.bapat@ucsf.edu.

PMID: 40315841
DOI: 10.1016/j.ccell.2025.04.004

Abstract

Arginine availability and metabolism critically shape tumor-immune interactions. In this issue of Cancer Cell, Zhu et al. demonstrate that breast cancer-cell-derived arginine synthesized via ASS1 fuels macrophage polyamine synthesis, reinforcing immunosuppressive tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs). Mechanistically, this occurs through TDG/p53-dependent DNA demethylation and activation of PPARG.

MeSH terms

Animals
Arginine* / metabolism
Breast Neoplasms* / immunology
Breast Neoplasms* / metabolism
Female
Humans
Macrophages* / immunology
Macrophages* / metabolism
Tumor Suppressor Protein p53 / metabolism
Tumor-Associated Macrophages* / immunology
Tumor-Associated Macrophages* / metabolism

Substances

Arginine
Tumor Suppressor Protein p53