A group of researchers has cataloged for the first time the bacteria existing in the metastases of up to 26 common types of cancer, through the analysis of 4,000 tissues, which could help better guide treatments, according to the finding reported this Tuesday in the scientific journal Cell.
There are bacteria, as well as viruses and yeast, that live in the human body, are part of the microbiome and collaborate with the immune system in the fight against pathogens.
Science knew of the presence of certain bacteria from the human body in tumors, but until now it was unknown how these bacteria reach cancer and what role they play in both the evolution of the disease and its treatments.
Dutch researchers have analyzed the DNA code of a total of 4,000 samples of metastatic tissues corresponding to 26 different types of cancer to catalog the existing bacteria and evaluate their influence on the response to treatments.
As a result, they have discovered that the bacteria present in a metastasis is strongly related to the location of the original tumor in the body.
They have also discovered a relationship between bacteria and the effectiveness of anti-tumor therapy, seeing for example that patients with metastatic lung cancer and a bacteria called ‘Fusobacterium’ in the tissue of their metastasis responded worse to immunotherapy than their colleagues without that bacteria.
“We also observed that the more diverse the bacterial community was, the more active the adjacent tumor cells were,” one of the authors, Thomas Battaglia, a researcher at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, pointed out in a statement from this institution.
“Our work opens doors to explore new forms of treatment, for example, against bacteria that could help the tumor,” says Iris Mimpen, co-author of the study.
In the opinion of the authors, this work ““It will help to understand how the complex environment of tumors works, where all types of cells – including bacteria – coexist and influence each other, and to better refine treatments.”.
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Source: Gestion
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