The Immune Landscape in Brain Metastasis

Abstract The prognosis for patients with brain metastasis remains dismal despite intensive therapy including surgical resection, radiotherapy, chemo-, targeted and immunotherapy. Thus, there is a high medical need for new therapeutic options. Recent advances employing high-throughput and spatially resolved single-cell analyses have provided unprecedented insights into the composition and phenotypes of the diverse immune cells in the metastatic brain, revealing a unique immune landscape starkly different from that of primary brain tumours or other metastatic sites. This review summarises the current evidence on the composition and phenotypes of the most prominent immune cells in the brain metastatic niche, along with their dynamic interactions with metastatic tumour cells and each other. As the most abundant immune cell types in this niche, we explore in detail the phenotypic heterogeneity and functional plasticity of tumour-associated macrophages, including both resident microglia and monocyte-derived macrophages, as well as the T-cell compartment. We also review pre-clinical and clinical trials evaluating the therapeutic potential of targeting the immune microenvironment in brain metastasis. Given the substantial evidence highlighting a significant role of the immune microenvironmental niche in brain metastasis pathogenesis, a comprehensive understanding of the key molecular and cellular factors within this niche holds great promise for developing novel therapeutic approaches as well as innovative combinatory treatment strategies for brain metastasis.