Search for the Clinical Significance of Tumor-associated Macrophages in Patients With Colorectal Liver Metastases

Some preliminary data produced by the research team from Humanitas Clinical and Research Center in Milan (ITALY) have shown that TAMs in CLM are heterogeneous and that their diversity can be distinguished based on their morphology and functionality. Therefore, TAMs may represent an additional tool in the definition of the biology and prognosis of CLM patients. This preliminary finding provides us with the rationale to undertake a prospective study on a large series of CLM patients surgically resected by our unit aimed at validating the promisingcorrelation between different TAMs phenotypes and patients prognosis. The characterization of the diversity of TAMs in CLM will be refined using state of the art technology, including multi-parametric flow cytometry, single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) transcriptional profiling, metabolomic, and proteomic analyses. The expected findings will allow us to develop a new diagnostic tool based on TAMs features, which will open the way to new criteria for patient stratification and for the design of new targeted therapies in a personalized medicine perspective.