Flow cytometry can reliably capture gut microbial composition in healthy adults as well as dysbiosis dynamics in patients with aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma
Maren Schmiester,
René Maier,
René Riedel,
Pawel Durek,
Marco Frentsch,
Stefan Kolling,
Mir-Farzin Mashreghi,
Robert Jenq,
Liangliang Zhang,
Christine B. Peterson,
Lars Bullinger,
Hyun-Dong Chang,
Il-Kang Na
Affiliations
Maren Schmiester
Department of Hematology, Oncology and Tumor Immunology, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
René Maier
Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum Berlin (DRFZ), an Institute of the Leibniz Association, Berlin, Germany
René Riedel
Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum Berlin (DRFZ), an Institute of the Leibniz Association, Berlin, Germany
Pawel Durek
Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum Berlin (DRFZ), an Institute of the Leibniz Association, Berlin, Germany
Marco Frentsch
BIH Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT), Berlin Institute of Health at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Stefan Kolling
BIH Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT), Berlin Institute of Health at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Mir-Farzin Mashreghi
BIH Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT), Berlin Institute of Health at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Robert Jenq
Department of Genomic Medicine, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA
Liangliang Zhang
Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
Christine B. Peterson
Department of Biostatistics, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA
Lars Bullinger
Department of Hematology, Oncology and Tumor Immunology, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Hyun-Dong Chang
Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum Berlin (DRFZ), an Institute of the Leibniz Association, Berlin, Germany
Il-Kang Na
Department of Hematology, Oncology and Tumor Immunology, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Modulation of commensal gut microbiota is increasingly recognized as a promising strategy to reduce mortality in patients with malignant diseases, but monitoring for dysbiosis is generally not routine clinical practice due to equipment, expertise and funding required for sequencing analysis. A low-threshold alternative is microbial diversity profiling by single-cell flow cytometry (FCM), which we compared to 16S rRNA sequencing in human fecal samples and employed to characterize longitudinal changes in the microbiome composition of patients with aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma undergoing chemoimmunotherapy. Diversity measures obtained from both methods were correlated and captured identical trends in microbial community structures, finding no difference in patients’ pretreatment alpha or beta diversity compared to healthy controls and a significant and progressive loss of alpha diversity during chemoimmunotherapy. Our results highlight the potential of FCM-based microbiome profiling as a reliable and accessible diagnostic tool that can provide novel insights into cancer therapy-associated dysbiosis dynamics.
