Two faces of polarized macrophages: differential effects of M1 and M2 macrophage subtypes on lung cancer progression

Macrophages in tumor microenvironment have been characterized as M1- and M2-polarized subtypes. This study sought to investigate the effects of different macrophage subtypes on the biological behavior and global gene expression profiles of lung cancer cells. Expression microarray and bioinformatics analyses indicated that the different macrophage subtypes mainly regulated genes involved in cell cycle, cytoskeletal remodeling, coagulation, cell adhesion and apoptosis pathways in A549 cells, a pattern that correlated with the altered behavior of A549 cells observed after coculture with macrophage subtypes. We used microarrays to identify the global gene alterations in lung cancer cells A549 after culture in conditioned media from different subtype macrophages. Lung cancer cells, A549, were cultured in M0, M1, M2a and M2c macrophages conditioned media for two weeks. The different subtype macrophages were differentiated by IFN-gamma, LPS, IL-4 and IL-10.