Regardless of the promising results of certain
immune checkpoint blockers, current immunotherapeutics have met a bottleneck concerning response rate, toxicity, and resistance in
lung cancer patients. Accumulating evidence forecasts that the crosstalk between
tumor and immune cells takes center stage in
cancer development by modulating
tumor malignancy, immune cell infiltration, and immune evasion in the tumor microenvironment (TME).
Cytokines and
chemokines secreted by this crosstalk play a major role in
cancer development, progression, and therapeutic management. An increased infiltration of Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) was observed in most of the human
cancers, including
lung cancer. In this review, we emphasize the role of
cytokines and
chemokines in TAM-
tumor cell crosstalk in the lung TME. Given the role of
cytokines and
chemokines in
immunomodulation, we propose that TAM-derived
cytokines and
chemokines govern the
cancer-promoting immune responses in the TME and offer a new immunotherapeutic option for
lung cancer treatment.