- There is growing interest among cancer patients in using probiotics to improve their health, but it is still unclear how gut microbes alter cancer immunotherapy responses.
- Now, researchers have shown that, in mouse models, the probiotic bacterium, or “good” bacterium, Lactobacillus reuteri travels to melanoma tumors, where it promotes antitumor immunity and facilitates cancer immunotherapy by releasing indole-3-aldehyde (I3A).
- They also found that advanced melanoma patients who responded to immunotherapy had higher I3A levels compared to non-responsive patients.
- More studies are required, but the researchers hope that these findings will pave the way for dietary- and probiotics-based cancer therapy.
In recent years, there has been remarkable progress in the field of cancer immunotherapy. This powerful cancer treatment strategy works by harnessing a person’s own immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells.
Currently, immunotherapy
Scientists are trying to figure out why different people have different responses to this form of cancer treatment.
One factor that may be responsible for the varying immunotherapy responsiveness is the gut microbiome — or the multitude of microbes found in the gut — which scientists believe may play a role in the body’s
Researchers have found that some gut bacteria may modify immune cell activity, whereas others may alter the effectiveness or toxicity of certain drugs.
The gut microbiome varies greatly from person to person. Even though individual humans are about 99.9% identical to one another in terms of DNA, they can be
The gut microbiome can be
Now, a new study from the University of…
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