How Gut Microbiome Diversity Impacts Outcomes for Patients With RCC

Nazli Dizman, MD, an Internal Medicine resident at Yale Department of Internal Medicine, discusses the role of gut microbiome diversities in cancer.

According to Dizman, gut microbiome diversities play a large role in modulating response to immunotherapy and the more diverse, the better. Within several cancer types, including renal cell carcinoma (RCC), microbial diversity is associated with better outcomes for patients.

Advancements in research have allowed investigators to better understand the microbiomes impact on clinical outcomes. In patients with RCC, better progression free survival and higher rates of response have been shown.

Transcription:

0:08 | Gut microbiome diversities are playing an important role in modulating one's response to immunotherapy as a diverse microbiome is a better microbiome. There are also a few other species that were shown to be associated with response immunotherapies and targeted therapies too such as akkermansia muciniphila which has shown to be associated with better outcomes with immunotherapies in several cancer types, including renal cell carcinoma. Bacterial species are associated with worse outcomes when they are abundant in one school.

0:54 | Overall, there's still inconsistencies across different studies in terms of the association between certain species and the outcomes, but what is consistent across studies is the microbiome diversity. In my presentation, I also mentioned that antibiotics may have detrimental roles in a patient's response to immunotherapies again, and even with targeted therapies, we have some evidence showing their role as a determinant of response. It doesn't mean that we should refrain from antibiotics, but we should be using them very mindfully. Beyond that, now we have techniques to modulate gut microbiome.