Manipulation of Mitochondrial Plasticity Changes the Metabolic Competition Between “Foe” and “Friend” During Tumor Malignant Transformation

• Main Authors: Hui Tian, Baofu Zhang, Liantao Li, Gang Wang, Huizhong Li, JunNian Zheng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-08-01
• Series: Frontiers in Oncology
• Subjects: mitochondrial plasticity; tumor metastasis; therapeutic resistance; T cells exhaustion; memory T cells
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fonc.2020.01692/full

Mitochondria as the cellular energy powerhouses provide a common site for multiple metabolic reactions in order to cover energy and biomolecule demands, thus integrating the diverse metabolic pathways to endow cells with metabolic adaptation. Mitochondrial plasticity is normally regulated by mitochondrial dynamics, mitochondrial metabolism and mitochondrial biogenesis. Given that tumor cells and T cells share the metabolic similarities of survival, proliferation, expansion as well as effector function, manipulation of mitochondrial plasticity would change the metabolic competition between “foe” and “friend” during tumor malignant progression. On the one hand, for “foe” tumor cells, mitochondrial plasticity provides the enhancement of tumor metastasis and the development of resistance to‘ diverse antitumor drugs. On the other hand, for “friend” T cells, mitochondrial plasticity promotes the generation of long-term memory T (TM) cells and alleviates the exhaustion of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs). Therefore, downregulation of mitochondrial plasticity of tumor cells through engineering tumor-targeting nanoparticles may effectively potentiate metabolic vulnerability and re-sensitize tumor to relevant therapeutic treatment. On the contrary, upregulation of mitochondrial plasticity of T cells through optimizing adoptive cellular immunotherapy (ACI) or chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy would provide T cells with the robust metabolic fitness and the persistent immune function, thus blocking tumor metastasis and reoccurrence.