New cancer research proposes a promising future
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Earlier this month, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published a press release concerning the usage of fecal transplants to augment immunotherapy in advanced skin cancer patients. According to the NCI, patients with advanced melanoma responded more favorably to immunotherapy drugs after receiving a transplant of fecal microbiota from other drug responders.
“Our study is one of the first to demonstrate in patients that altering the composition of the gut microbiome can improve the response to immunotherapy,” said Giorgio Trinchieri, chief of the Laboratory of Integrative Cancer Immunology at the NCI. “The data provides proof of concept that the gut microbiome can be a therapeutic target in cancer.”
Fecal Microbiome Transplant Converts Melanoma Immunotherapy Non-Responders into Responders
February 5, 2021
Scientists at the NIH in collaboration with UPMC Hillman Cancer Center have shown how some patients with advanced melanoma that hasn’t responded to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy, can be converted to immunotherapy responders by giving them a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT), taken from patients who had responded very well to immunotherapy. Results from the proof-of-principle Phase II study, reported in
Science, suggest that introducing certain fecal microorganisms into a patient’s colon may help individuals respond to drugs that enhance the immune system’s ability to recognize and kill tumor cells.
Faecal Transplants Might Help Boost Cancer Treatment, Study Finds
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Syringes filled with stool being prepped for faecal microbiota transplantation. (Photo: Thierry Zoccolan, Getty Images)
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Faecal transplants, already being studied as a treatment for colon infections and type 2 diabetes, may also help the body fight cancer, new U.S. government-funded research suggests. In a small clinical trial, some patients with advanced cancer who received the transplants began responding to treatments that hadn’t worked earlier, which either stabilised or shrunk their tumours.
HIN
For patients with cancers that do not respond to immunotherapy drugs, adjusting the composition of microorganisms in the intestines – known as the gut microbiome – through the use of stool, or fecal, transplants may help some of these individuals respond to the immunotherapy drugs, a new study suggests. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Center for Cancer Research, part of the National Institutes of Health, conducted the study in collaboration with investigators from UPMC Hillman Cancer Center at the University of Pittsburgh.
In the study, some patients with advanced melanoma who initially did not respond to treatment with an immune checkpoint inhibitor, a type of immunotherapy, did respond to the drug after receiving a transplant of fecal microbiota from a patient who had responded to the drug. The results suggest that introducing certain fecal microorganisms into a patient’s colon may help the patient respond to drugs that enhance the immune system’s a