LAUSR

The advances in immunotherapies in the last decades have brought new hope in the battle against cancer (Wang et al., 2019; Morad et al., 2021). These therapies include immune checkpoint blockade (ICB), chimeric antigen receptors T-cell (CAR-T), T-cell receptor (TCR)based adoptive cell therapy, oncolytic virus, and cancer vaccine. Unfortunately, intrinsic and acquired resistance prevent most patients from benefiting from these emerging treatments (Majzner and Mackall, 2018; Morad et al., 2021). Tumor cells are heterogeneous and able to harness epigenomic alterations to alter the phenotype. Besides cancer cells, endothelial cells, immune cells, tumor-associated fibroblasts, extracellular matrix components, metabolic products, and signaling molecules form structurally complicated tissues known as the tumor microenvironment (TME) (Hu et al., 2022). The heterogeneity of TME provides unique opportunities for tumors to escape immune restriction through various mechanisms (Zhengxi Chen, 2020; Hu et al., 2022). Therefore, discovering and targeting these immune escape mechanisms have been a focused area in cancer immunology, aiming to develop new strategies to improve immunotherapies (Bader et al., 2020; Hu et al., 2020; Hu et al., 2022). This Research Topic focuses on the immunosuppressive TME in tumor initiation, progression, and resistance to immunotherapies. 16 outstanding original studies and 2 review articles from 139 authors have been published, demonstrating emerging interest in cancer immunotherapy. This Research Topic contains studies on the following three topics.