Professor Luke O'Neill

It'll tell you what the podcast is about.

Show Me the Science with Professor Luke O'Neill.

Hello, Luke O'Neill here, and welcome to Show Me the Science, my weekly podcast.

Now, a request, and I've had a few requests lately, and I'm very happy to try and cover them.

It's laoneill, with two L's, at tcd.ie.

And if one comes in, I'll do my best, you know, if I find it interesting or know stuff about it.

Some of the stuff I wouldn't know much about, so I'm slightly worried.

reluctant but this one is in my wheelhouse as the phrase goes and it's Larry Riley and Larry you're on the money with this this is all about the science of bacteria and cancer now when I say bacteria what I mean is a thing called the microbiome now the microbiome is a big fancy word all it means is the bacteria in your gut your gut is full of bacteria and they've been studied for decades and lately last 10 15 20 years I guess very hot part of bioscience and

looking at the different species and how they change and how they affect our health.

And the health of your gut is really important for your health overall.

And loads of studies are showing if you get the balance right of bacteria in your gut, it can impact on things like Parkinson's disease, depression, all kinds of things.

And in fact, in Ireland, we're blessed with a very good effective research unit down in Cork called the APC that investigates this and has really made fantastic contributions to this area.

But Larry is asking about cancer because he's spotted, I'll bet you, a growing literature about this.

And again, what's happening here is scientists who work on cancer are looking at the microbiome, trying to see if it's relevant for maybe developing cancer.

Secondly, maybe certain combinations protect against cancer.

And there is evidence, as I will come back to for all of that.

But the most compelling evidence by far, so far, is there are studies now showing that the type of bacteria in your gut will determine whether you respond to chemotherapy or immunotherapy.

Now, this could be extremely important because if you get the bugs in the gut right, there's a bigger chance that things like immunotherapy will work.

And we know there's variation.

I've covered this in other podcasts.