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Cancer Cells and Metastasis / Immune Cells in Cancer · Journal article
Molecular Cancer · August 13, 2026
A consensus or society position rather than new primary data.
This is a narrative review examining cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) in the tumor microenvironment, proposing that CAFs possess previously underappreciated tumor-suppressive functions alongside their pro-tumoral roles. The review challenges the conventional strategy of CAF depletion and proposes instead a context-specific approach exploiting CAF anti-tumoral properties based on improved CAF stratification.
Narrative review. Cancer patients and tumor microenvironment systems involving cancer-associated fibroblasts.
Indiscriminate targeting of CAFs can accelerate tumor progression, demonstrating their functional heterogeneity Accumulating evidence demonstrates tumor-restraining roles of CAFs previously underappreciated in the field CAF subtypes exhibit tumor-suppressive mechanisms and properties warranting therapeutic exploitation rather than elimination
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This review suggests clinicians and researchers should reconsider blanket CAF-depletion strategies in cancer therapy and instead pursue CAF subtype characterization to enable context-specific, targeted approaches that may harness anti-tumoral CAF functions. The findings argue for precision targeting rather than indiscriminate CAF elimination.
A narrative review synthesizing emerging evidence on CAF functional heterogeneity and tumor-suppressive roles, proposing a conceptual shift in therapeutic strategy based on mechanistic understanding rather than reporting a new empirical finding.
As stated by the source record.
This review suggests clinicians and researchers should reconsider blanket CAF-depletion strategies in cancer therapy and instead pursue CAF subtype characterization to enable context-specific, targeted approaches that may harness anti-tumoral CAF functions. The findings argue for precision targeting rather than indiscriminate CAF elimination.
Graded across the dimensions that decide whether you should act, each from what the source actually supports. There is no single score, and where a dimension was not assessed it says so.
What is missing. This record has no reported figures. That is a gap in the analysis, not a judgement about the study.
In the past decades, cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) have emerged as central regulators of the tumor microenvironment (TME). CAFs have been implicated in extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling, cytokine secretion and the establishment of the desmoplastic niche that supports tumor progression. Consequently, for long time, therapeutic strategies have focused on CAF depletion. However, accumulating evidence have demonstrated that indiscriminate targeting of CAFs can accelerate tumor progression, revealing their functional heterogeneity and a previously underappreciated tumor-restraining role. In this review, we examine the evolving paradigm of CAF biology, highlighting emerging tumor-suppressive CAF subtypes and their underlying mechanisms. We discuss how these findings challenge conventional therapeutic strategies and propose, based on this improved CAF stratification, a conceptual shift toward CAF exploitation rather than elimination. Ultimately, harnessing CAF anti-tumoral properties may open new avenues for more effective and context-specific cancer therapies.
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