Abstract:

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) has the highest mortality rate among gynecological malignancies. The interactions between immune cells and tumor cells in the tumor immune microenvironment may form a vicious cycle, promoting tumor development. Therefore, in-depth exploration of the tumor immune microenvironment is crucial for developing immunotherapy strategies for EOC. Traditional high-throughput sequencing techniques can only detect average gene expression levels of cell populations, masking rare heterogeneous cells and limiting our comprehensive understanding of the complex tumor immune microenvironment. The advent of single-cell sequencing technology has overcome this limitation, revealing the heterogeneity of the EOC immune microenvironment at the individual cell level through high-resolution sequencing. This technology enables precise identification of different immune cell subsets, analysis of their developmental and differentiation pathways, and investigation of intercellular interactions. This review particularly focuses on the immune microenvironment characteristics of multiple sites in EOC, summarizes the application prospects of single-cell sequencing in guiding personalized immunotherapy and developing novel treatment strategies, and points out future research directions, providing important references for advancing immunotherapy.

Key words: Carcinoma, ovarian epithelial, Tumor microenvironment, Antineoplastic agents, immunological, Immunotherapy, Single-cell analysis, Sequence analysis, RNA