中性粒细胞是被招募到发炎组织的初级骨髓细胞，它们是结肠炎过程中的关键角色，在结肠癌的发生和生长过程中也存在于肿瘤微环境中。中性粒细胞从根本上起到保护宿主免受微生物侵袭的作用，但在癌症发展过程中，它们可以变成促肿瘤细胞并导致肿瘤的发生、生长，并最终发生转移，因此对宿主发挥着双重作用。癌症患者中的促肿瘤中性粒细胞可以具有免疫抑制作用，并可作为疾病进展的标志物，但其特征尚未完全确定。在这篇综述中，我们探讨了关于肠道中的中性粒细胞如何在炎症或免疫抑制状态之间波动以及它们如何促进肿瘤发展的当前知识。我们描述了中性粒细胞在炎症性肠病期间的抗肿瘤和促肿瘤作用，并强调了它们引发炎症驱动的结直肠癌出现的能力。我们展示了结肠肿瘤微环境中中性粒细胞群的功能矛盾，这有可能被用来建立预防甚至逆转高危患者炎症依赖性结肠癌发病率的疗法。©2024 美国癌症研究协会。

Neutrophils are the primary myeloid cells that are recruited to inflamed tissues, and they are key players during colitis, being also present within the tumor microenvironment during the initiation and growth of colon cancer. Neutrophils fundamentally serve to protect the host against microorganism invasion, but during cancer development, they can become protumoral and lead to tumor initiation, growth, and eventually, metastasis-hence, playing a dichotomic role for the host. Protumoral neutrophils in cancer patients can be immunosuppressive and serve as markers for disease progression but their characteristics are not fully defined. In this review, we explore the current knowledge on how neutrophils in the gut fluctuate between an inflammatory or immunosuppressive state and how they contribute to tumor development. We describe neutrophils' antitumoral and protumoral effects during inflammatory bowel diseases and highlight their capacity to provoke the advent of inflammation-driven colorectal cancer. We present the functional ambivalence of the neutrophil populations within the colon tumor microenvironment, which can be potentially exploited to establish therapies that will prevent, or even reverse, inflammation-dependent colon cancer incidence in high-risk patients.©2024 American Association for Cancer Research.