A journey to uncharted territory: new technical frontiers in studying tumor-stromal cell interactions

The crosstalk between tumor cells and cells of the tumor stroma dictate malignant progression and represent an intriguing and viable anticancer therapeutic target. The successful development of therapeutics targeting tumor-stroma interactions is tied to the insight provided by basic research on such crosstalk. Tumor-stroma interactions can be transient and dynamic, and they occur within defined spatiotemporal contexts among genetically and compositionally heterogeneous populations of cells, yet methods currently applied to study the said crosstalk do not sufficiently address these features. Emerging imaging and genetic methods, however, can overcome limitations of traditional approaches and provide unprecedented insight into tumor-stroma crosstalk with unparalleled accuracy. The comprehensive data obtained by applying emerging methods will require processing and analysis by multidisciplinary teams, but the efforts will ultimately rejuvenate hope in developing novel therapies against pro-tumorigenic tumor-stroma crosstalk. The complexities of tumor-stroma interactions necessitate new means of analysis. This review details emerging imaging and genetic methods that hold promise to provide unprecedented insight into tumor-stroma crosstalk.