The study found that the response of cancer immunotherapy is affected by the intestinal microorganisms

Immunotherapy for cancer is to effectively resist cancer by activating the immune system in the body This strategy has become the main direction of cancer treatment in recent years But the main problem of this treatment is the heterogeneous inhibition of the therapeutic effect: Although for some patients, the drug (http:// can have very good effect and low side effects, for others, the therapeutic effect is limited and the side effects are large Researchers have always wanted to know how to further improve the efficacy of immunotherapy, and finally made some progress A team of researchers recently found that patients' response to cancer immunotherapy is influenced by gut microbes Specifically, the higher the diversity of intestinal microorganisms, the more obvious the therapeutic effect Previous studies at the mouse level have confirmed this conclusion Researchers from the Texas Medical Center analyzed microbial components in samples from the mouth and feces of patients with malignant melanoma (http:// For malignant melanoma, 35% of patients survived more than two years after immunotherapy, compared with 29.7% of patients receiving chemotherapy In the group of patients receiving immunotherapy, there were 30 patients with benign reactions, while the remaining 13 patients did not respond These patients with benign reactions have something in common First of all, their intestinal microbial diversity is significantly higher, especially the bacteria of Clostridium perfringens family In addition, the number of immune cells that can specifically kill tumors in their bodies also increased significantly compared with the unresponsive patients For unresponsive patients, the number of Bacteroides in their intestines increased significantly This finding indicates that there is a correlation between the diversity of intestinal microbial population and the therapeutic effect of anticancer immune drugs Simply put, the more microbes you have, the better your immune response against cancer is Next, the researchers hope to establish a clinical trial of cancer treatment for intestinal microorganisms (http:// which can help us to find out whether there is a causal relationship or only a correlation between the two If the results of the trial are as we expected, we may be able to improve the effect of cancer immunotherapy in the future by only giving patients a dose of bacterial cocktail medicine, or slightly adjusting their diet.