I just saw this article on Bloomberg business regarding probiotics. I was not sure where to post it, as it is not a scientific reference, and I considered posting it in the thread "Turkey tail mushroom & multiple myeloma" (started Jan 6, 2016), since I had posted a scientific reference to probiotics recently. I also thought I would post it since many posters say that scientists / drug companies will never study a natural product since they cannot patent it.
Here is information about the article, including a link to it:
"How Gut Bacteria Are Shaking Up Cancer Research," Bloomberg.com, March 14, 2016 (full text of article)
And here are some excerpts:
"Top scientists at Roche Holding AG and AstraZeneca Plc are sizing up potential allies in the fight against cancer: the trillions of bacteria that live in the human body.
"Five years ago, if you had asked me about bacteria in your gut playing an important role in your systemic immune response, I probably would have laughed it off," Daniel Chen, head of cancer immunotherapy research at Roche’s Genentech division, said in a phone interview. "Most of us immunologists now believe that there really is an important interaction there."
Two recent studies published in the journal Science have intrigued Chen and others who are developing medicines called immunotherapies that stimulate the body’s ability to fight tumors.
In November, University of Chicago researchers wrote that giving mice Bifidobacterium, which normally resides in the gastrointestinal tract, was as effective as an immunotherapy in controlling the growth of skin cancer. Combining the two practically eliminated tumor growth. In the second study, scientists in France found that some bacterial species activated a response to immunotherapy, which didn’t occur without the microbes."
"Nestle SA last January invested $65 million in Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Seres Therapeutics Inc., which is developing a treatment for Clostridium difficile, which affects the digestive system. That follows early efforts to harness the microbiome’s benefits, which spawned probiotic foods and supplements as well as transplants of healthy bacteria.
The promise in cancer will draw more large drugmakers into exploring the human microbiome, said Bernat Olle, chief executive officer of Vedanta Biosciences, a Boston-based startup."
Forums
4 posts
• Page 1 of 1
Re: News article: Gut bacteria shaking up cancer research
Interesting stuff, Mark. I know there's a lot of interest in the human microbiome and its influence in a variety of aspects of health and disease. It will be really interesting to see how this develops. It's a very complex system, so it will take a while to get stuff figured out, but there sure seems to be a lot of promise.
-
Mike F - Name: Mike F
- Who do you know with myeloma?: Me
- When were you/they diagnosed?: May 18, 2012
- Age at diagnosis: 53
Re: News article: Gut bacteria shaking up cancer research
Here is an article from Nature Microbiology on this topic.
JU Peled et al, "Role of gut flora after bone marrow transplantation," Nature Microbiology, April 2016 (abstract, full text PDF of article)
Apparently this has been a topic of conversation at the European Bone Marrow Transplant meeting. This is one of the reasons I like reading allo / immunotherapy doctors as opposed to the "myeloma thought leaders". The discussions by the "myeloma thought leaders" amount to nothing more than drugs, drugs, and more discussions of how patients should keep taking more drugs.
JU Peled et al, "Role of gut flora after bone marrow transplantation," Nature Microbiology, April 2016 (abstract, full text PDF of article)
Apparently this has been a topic of conversation at the European Bone Marrow Transplant meeting. This is one of the reasons I like reading allo / immunotherapy doctors as opposed to the "myeloma thought leaders". The discussions by the "myeloma thought leaders" amount to nothing more than drugs, drugs, and more discussions of how patients should keep taking more drugs.
-
Mark11
Re: News article: Gut bacteria shaking up cancer research
I read an article about this topic this weekend. Much of it discusses research in mice, which does not always translate well to humans, particularly in a disease like myeloma. Note the article mentions Keytruda (pembrolizumab), which is in trial for myeloma. The article mentions designing a clinical trial for cancer patients which will include a specific probiotic.
"Ideally, the immune system should recognize cancer as invasive and nip tumor growth in the bud. But cancer cells display “self” molecules that can inhibit immune attack. A new type of immunotherapy, dubbed checkpoint inhibition or blockade, spurs the immune system to attack cancer by blocking either the tumor cells’ surface molecules or the receptors on T cells that bind to them.
As part of their comparison of Jackson and Taconic mice, Gajewski and his colleagues decided to test a type of investigational checkpoint inhibitor that targets PD-L1, a ligand found in high quantities on the surface of multiple types of cancer cells. Monoclonal antibodies that bind to PD-L1 block the PD-1 receptors on T cells from doing so, allowing an immune response to proceed against the tumor cells. While treating Taconic mice with PD-L1–targeting antibodies did improve their tumor responses, they did even better when that treatment was combined with fecal transfers from Jackson mice, indicating that the microbiome and the immunotherapy can work together to take down cancer. And when the researchers combined the anti-PD-L1 therapy with a bifidobacteria-enriched diet, the mice’s tumors virtually disappeared.14
Gajewski’s group is now surveying the gut microbiota in humans undergoing therapy with checkpoint inhibitors to better understand which bacterial species are linked to positive outcomes. The researchers are also devising a clinical trial in which they will give Bifidobacterium supplements to cancer patients being treated with the approved anti-PD-1 therapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda), which targets the immune receptor PD-1 on T cells, instead of the cancer-cell ligand PD-L1."
Souce:
Kate Yandell, "Microbes meet cancer - Understanding cancer’s relationship with the human microbiome could transform immune-modulating therapies," The Scientist, April 1, 2016 (link to full text of article)
"Ideally, the immune system should recognize cancer as invasive and nip tumor growth in the bud. But cancer cells display “self” molecules that can inhibit immune attack. A new type of immunotherapy, dubbed checkpoint inhibition or blockade, spurs the immune system to attack cancer by blocking either the tumor cells’ surface molecules or the receptors on T cells that bind to them.
As part of their comparison of Jackson and Taconic mice, Gajewski and his colleagues decided to test a type of investigational checkpoint inhibitor that targets PD-L1, a ligand found in high quantities on the surface of multiple types of cancer cells. Monoclonal antibodies that bind to PD-L1 block the PD-1 receptors on T cells from doing so, allowing an immune response to proceed against the tumor cells. While treating Taconic mice with PD-L1–targeting antibodies did improve their tumor responses, they did even better when that treatment was combined with fecal transfers from Jackson mice, indicating that the microbiome and the immunotherapy can work together to take down cancer. And when the researchers combined the anti-PD-L1 therapy with a bifidobacteria-enriched diet, the mice’s tumors virtually disappeared.14
Gajewski’s group is now surveying the gut microbiota in humans undergoing therapy with checkpoint inhibitors to better understand which bacterial species are linked to positive outcomes. The researchers are also devising a clinical trial in which they will give Bifidobacterium supplements to cancer patients being treated with the approved anti-PD-1 therapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda), which targets the immune receptor PD-1 on T cells, instead of the cancer-cell ligand PD-L1."
Souce:
Kate Yandell, "Microbes meet cancer - Understanding cancer’s relationship with the human microbiome could transform immune-modulating therapies," The Scientist, April 1, 2016 (link to full text of article)
-
Mark11
4 posts
• Page 1 of 1
Return to Treatments & Side Effects