Exploring the role of ferroptosis in esophageal cancer: mechanisms and therapeutic implications

Abstract

With the development of medical and health care, esophageal cancer (EC) has become a disease of concern to the scientific research community. At present, among all treatment regimens for EC, surgical resection is conducive to the prognosis of early patients neoadjuvant therapies are recommended for advanced patients. However, treatments now are not satisfactory in suppressing the progression of EC. Ferroptosis is one distinctive cell death mode, noted for the accumulation of iron as well as lipotoxicity, which induce cell membrane to breakdown. As a star protein of ferroptosis related pathway, GPX4 is related to the homeostatic imbalance of tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) of EC, thereby regulating the onset as well as progression of the cancer. In our manuscript, we present the mechanisms involved in ferroptosis, the functions of ferroptosis in the TIME. We also focused on the progression about ferroptosis in EC, as well as targeting ferroptosis-related pathways to delay the development of EC. We expect that these contents can expand fresh insights and aim for EC therapeutic strategy in clinical practice.