Professor Luke O'Neill

And another study that's been shown to be relevant is antibiotics, which will kill bacteria, can decrease the response to chemo.

So if you have antibiotics to clear bacteria,

they're no longer there and the chemo can't act on them and therefore you're getting a decreased response.

And in fact, the advice now is don't take antibiotics or your doctor will do this for you with chemo because it could potentially decrease the effect of chemo.

Very, very important observation.

But the real excitement is about immunotherapy.

Now remember, I think I've discovered this before, any regular listeners will know immunotherapy in cancer is massive.

Blocking various targets in the immune system to unleash it will allow the immune system, your very own immune system, to go into a tumor and kill it, just like it would a bacteria or a virus or whatever it is.

And this is a very important area within immunology.

It's called immuno-oncology and it's seen as the real prospect to cure cancer.

Maybe certainly to treat it will be through the immune system.

Now,

Absolutely, they've spotted the types of bacteria can govern whether you respond to immunotherapy or not.

One really good one, there's been several studies on this, the ones I like, Ackermansia mucinophilia, that one, that will increase the response to what's called checkpoint blockade.

Another one called faecal bacterium proniti,

that will increase response to checkpoint blockade as well.

But if you have one called Fusobacteria, that decreases the response.

Now, what's going on here?

Well, if you have those ones that are good, the ones that are actually, if they're present, and you trigger the immune response, right, you're increasing the activity of what are called CD8 T cells.

You can kill the tumor.