Analyzing the Role of Gut Microbiome in Renal Cell Carcinoma

Nazli Dizman, MD, internal medicine resident at Yale Department of Internal Medicine, discusses the role of the gut microbiome in cancers like renal cell carcinoma.

According to Dizman, gut microbiome influences a patient's immune system in a variety of ways by including metabolites that go to circulation, stemming circulation, changing immune responses, modulating immune-risk cancers, and by having a strong presence of bacteria in tumor microenvironment.

Having microbial diversity also tends to be linked with better treatment outcomes which can be characterized by changes in microbial species over the course of treatment, especially in renal cell carcinoma. Still, more research is needed to fully understand how we can use gut microbiome to treat patients with cancer.

Transcription:

0:08 | In general gut microbiome affects the immune system in different ways, including its metabolites going to circulation, stemming circulation, changing immune responses, with the presence of bacteria in tumor microenvironment and this way modulating immune-risk cancers. In renal cell carcinoma, we have a lot of data that has been done in the United States and in Europe in large cohorts looking at response characteristics and it looks like its determinant of better outcomes in renal cell carcinoma as well, beyond that microbial diversity which is so important. This has been shown in renal cell carcinoma to be associated with better outcomes with immunotherapy patients.

1:13 | Also, our study that I mentioned where we attempted to modulate gut microbiome with live bacterial production obtained very interesting, impressive results in patients treated with this live bacterial product. In renal cell carcinoma where we have immunotherapies as the backbone of treatment, microbiome is going to play an important role and is playing an important role, and we investigators need to work a little bit more to understand how we can modulate and how we can use microbiome to help treat cancer.