Communications Biology (Feb 2021)

Gut microbiome diversity is an independent predictor of survival in cervical cancer patients receiving chemoradiation

  • Travis T. Sims,
  • Molly B. El Alam,
  • Tatiana V. Karpinets,
  • Stephanie Dorta-Estremera,
  • Venkatesh L. Hegde,
  • Sita Nookala,
  • Kyoko Yoshida-Court,
  • Xiaogang Wu,
  • Greyson W. G. Biegert,
  • Andrea Y. Delgado Medrano,
  • Travis Solley,
  • Mustapha Ahmed-Kaddar,
  • Bhavana V. Chapman,
  • K. Jagannadha Sastry,
  • Melissa P. Mezzari,
  • Joseph F. Petrosino,
  • Lilie L. Lin,
  • Lois Ramondetta,
  • Anuja Jhingran,
  • Kathleen M. Schmeler,
  • Nadim J. Ajami,
  • Jennifer Wargo,
  • Lauren E. Colbert,
  • Ann H. Klopp

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-021-01741-x
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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Travis Sims and Molly El Alam et al. show that diversity of gut microbiota is associated with a favorable response to chemoradiation for cervical cancer and use flow cytometry to show that patients with high microbiome diversity had increased tumor infiltration of CD4+ lymphocytes as well as activated subsets of CD4 cells expressing ki67+ and CD69+ throughout radiation therapy. These results reveal how modulation of the gut microbiota could potentially be used to improve treatment efficacy and outcome.