Abstract
Many intestinal bacteria are believed to be involved in various inflammatory and immune processes that influence tumor etiology because of their metabolic properties and their ability to alter the microbiota homeostasis. Although many functions of the microbiota are still unclear, there is compelling experimental evidence showing that the intestinal microbiota is able to modulate carcinogenesis and the response to anticancer therapies, both in the intestinal tract and other body sites. Among the wide variety of gut-colonizing microorganisms, various species belonging to the Bifidobacterium genus are believed to elicit beneficial effects on human physiology and on the host-immune system. Recent findings, based on preclinical mouse models and on human clinical trials, have demonstrated the impact of gut commensals including bifidobacteria on the efficacy of tumor-targeting immunotherapy. Although the underlying molecular mechanisms remain obscure, bifidobacteria and other microorganisms have become a promising aid to immunotherapeutic procedures that are currently applied to treat cancer. The present review focuses on strategies to recruit the microbiome in order to enhance anticancer responses and develop therapies aimed at fighting the onset and progression of malignancies.
Highlights
Reviewed by: Jose Munoz, Northumbria University, United Kingdom Valerio Rossini, University College Cork, Ireland Shin Yoshimoto, Morinaga Milk Industry Co., Ltd., Japan
The present review focuses on strategies to recruit the microbiome in order to enhance anticancer responses and develop therapies aimed at fighting the onset and progression of malignancies
immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) has revolutionized the therapeutic approach in immunogenic cancers like melanoma (Vetizou et al, 2015) and renal cell carcinoma (RCC) (Motzer et al, 2015) as well as malignancy considered non-immunogenic like nonsmall cell lung cancers (NSCLC) (Borghaei et al, 2015; Carbone et al, 2017) or mismatch-repair-deficient colorectal cancer (Le et al, 2015)
Summary
The definition of microbiome and microbiota is rather complex and often these two terms are used interchangeably. The currently employed molecular techniques applied to the microbiota analysis, including the recently emerged metagenomic technology, are based on culture-independent methods Their application have been made possible due to the advancement of next-generation sequencing methods (NGS), Bacterial Communities and Cancer allowing the compositional evaluation of bacterial populations and the discovery of essentially the entire genetic blueprint of microbial communities (i.e., microbiota and microbiome analysis) (Mancabelli et al, 2020). Throughout life, diet influences bacterial colonization and persistence in the intestine, shaping the gut microbiota composition (Fuentes and de Vos, 2016) In this context, butyrogenic bacteria such as members of the genus Clostridium cluster XIVa, responsible of butyrate production, are more abundant in the fecal microbiota of omnivores than in the vegetarian microbiota, including humans. Recent work has indicated that altered microbial communities and intestinal barrier impairment are associated with the development of a number of chronic inflammatory disorders, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), celiac disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, type 2 diabetes, allergic diseases, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative diseases (Yu, 2018), some of which may directly or indirectly lead to cancer (Stidham and Higgins, 2018)
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