Gut Bacteria's Role in Cancer Therapy Wins Award
An international research team has won the €350,000 Bial Award in Biomedicine for a discovery linking gut bacteria to the efficacy of cancer treatment. Their study, published in *Science*, found that a healthy gut microbiota can enhance immunotherapy, while antibiotics can impair its effect. The research highlights the critical role of the microbiome in systemic health and treatment outcomes.
- The award-winning research, led by Laurence Zitvogel and Guido Kroemer, identified the bacterium *Akkermansia muciniphila* as being associated with a better clinical response to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy, a specific type of cancer treatment. - The negative impact of antibiotics on immunotherapy can be stark; one study showed that cancer patients who took antibiotics in the month before starting treatment had a median overall survival of just two months, compared to 26 months for those who did not. - This field is attracting significant venture capital, with VCs investing $436 million into probiotic and supplement startups in 2021, a five-fold increase from five years prior. Notable startups in the personalized nutrition and microbiome space include ZOE, Viome, and Pendulum Therapeutics, backed by firms like Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Founders Fund. - Artificial intelligence and machine learning are critical for personalization in this sector, as they can analyze the 100 trillion organisms of the microbiome to predict an individual's metabolic response to specific foods and generate data-driven dietary recommendations. - The therapeutic potential of the microbiome is now being realized, with the FDA approving the first microbiome-based drugs, Rebyota® and VOWST™, to treat recurrent *C. difficile* infections, establishing a regulatory pathway for future therapeutics. - For the longevity and biohacking communities, research has linked unique gut microbiome patterns to healthy aging and longer lifespans. Healthier older adults tend to have more diverse gut microbes and higher levels of beneficial metabolites, such as tryptophan-derived-indole, which has been shown to reduce inflammation. - Future interventions to improve cancer therapy response, known as "microbiome modulation," are moving into clinical trials and include fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), prebiotics, and targeted, next-generation probiotics.
