Cancer-associated fibroblasts in radiotherapy: challenges and new opportunities

Radiotherapy is one of the most important therapeutic strategies for treating cancer. For decades, studies concerning the outcomes of radiotherapy mainly focused on the biological effects of radiation on tumor cells. Recently, we have increasingly recognized that the complex cellular interactions within the tumor microenvironment (TME) are closely related to treatment outcomes.As a critical component of the TME, fibroblasts participate in all...