Some of that work has already been done, and updated results will be reported at the AACR meeting.
AACR president and press conference comoderator Elizabeth M. Jaffee, MD, said the findings highlight an “exciting area that’s emerging in cancer research right now.”
Although microbiome research is in its infancy, the MD Anderson group and others are “really making headway,” said Dr. Jaffee, professor of oncology and deputy director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
“It’s exciting ... to learn from your study that patients and healthy individuals can also be empowered through diet to control cancer development, and also how they can be empowered to influence favorable response to our therapies,” she said, cautioning, however, that “this is early and certainly we need more research in this area.”
Also of note, the findings show that gut bacteria affect cancers that aren’t necessarily deriving from the gut.
“So the microbiome has importance in, probably, many different cancers and their response to therapy – and possibly in the development of those cancers, so those are areas of research that we need to prioritize in future work, as well,” she said.
This study was sponsored by the Melanoma Research Alliance, the MD Anderson Melanoma Moonshot, the Miriam and Jim Mulva Fund for Melanoma Research, and the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation. Dr. Spencer disclosed that she is a contributor to U.S. patent application (PCT/US17/53.717) submitted by MD Anderson Cancer Center that covers methods to enhance immune checkpoint blockade responses by modulating the microbiome.
SOURCE: Spencer C et al. AACR 2019, Abstract preview.