Radiotherapy, EMP and dormancy in TME: An integrated perspective on tumor microenvironments and long-term relapse

Description

Yebin Lee, Byeongseok Jang, and Hae-Yun Jung reviewed radiotherapy, cell plasticity, and tumor dormancy in a 2026 article. Radiotherapy cures many cancers, yet tumors can return years later, near the treated site or far away. Sleeping tumor cells that wake late are a prime suspect.

The review explains how epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity lets scattered tumor cells switch states, enter dormancy, and later restart growth. Radiotherapy itself reshapes the tumor surroundings, stiffening tissue and moving immune cells, and those changes can trigger the plasticity switch. The authors weigh whether treatment can thus sow later spread even as it kills the main tumor. They close with candidate strategies to block treatment linked metastasis and prevent late relapse in distant organs.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13273515