Microbiota boost immunotherapy? A meta-analysis dives into fecal microbiota transplantation and immune checkpoint inhibitors
2025-07-30
(Press-News.org)
In light of the potential and challenges surrounding the combination of FMT and ICIs in tumor immunotherapy, this study aims to comprehensively evaluate the clinical efficacy, safety, and potential predictive factors of this combination therapy through a systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Specifically, this study will focus on the therapeutic efficacy, survival outcomes, safety. Furthermore, subgroup analysis will focus on how different factors, including ICI strategies, FMT donor sources, FMT administration routes, and tumor types that influence treatment outcomes. Through this comprehensive analysis, we aim to provide high-quality, evidence-based insights into the application of FMT in immunotherapy to support clinical decision-making, future research design, and the development of individualized treatment strategies.
We conducted a comprehensive search of relevant studies available up to September 30, 2024 to analyze the clinical efficacy and safety of combining FMT with ICIs in cancer treatment. A total of 10 studies involving 164 patients with solid tumors were included.
The pooled ORR was 43% (95% CI: 0.35-0.51), CR rate was 12% (95%CI: 0.07-0.19), and PR rate estimate was 34% (95%CI: 0.26-0.42). Subgroup analysis revealed that the combination of anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4 therapies was associated with a significantly higher ORR (60%) compared to anti-PD-1 monotherapy (37%; P = 0.01). The heterogeneity test of CR and PR indicated low to moderate heterogeneity across studies. Subgroup analyses of PR and CR showed that comparisons between groups were largely consistent with those for ORR.The incidence of grade 1-2 adverse events (AEs) was 42% (95% CI: 0.32-0.52), while grade 3-4 AEs occurred in 37% of patients (95% CI: 0.28-0.46).
Despite the aforementioned limitations, this meta-analysis provides preliminary evidence supporting the application of FMT combined with ICIs in the treatment of advanced or refractory tumors. The findings indicate that this combination therapy may offer significant clinical benefits, including improved objective response and disease control rates, with an acceptable safety profile. In the future, to further investigate the potential of FMT in the therapeutic application of ICIs, we should comprehensively examine the interactions among microbial specific properties, metabolites, colonization environments, immunopharmaceutical agents, tumorigenicity, and dietary strategies. Additionally, artificial intelligence algorithms should be leveraged to analyze human microbiome sequencing data, extracting key information for clinical applications. This interdisciplinary integration and cross-disciplinary collaboration will pave the way for significant breakthroughs in precision tumor therapy.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2025-07-30
Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) – critical but enigmatic players in tumors – exhibit "paradoxical" effects on immunotherapy, according to a new review in Clinical and Translational Discovery. While most CAFs suppress immune cells to accelerate cancer progression, certain subtypes actively restrain tumors. This duality stems from CAFs’ extreme heterogeneity, explaining why depleting all CAFs sometimes backfires by accelerating metastasis.
CAFs sabotage immunotherapy through multiple mechanisms: ...
2025-07-30
Gen-AI is increasingly recognized for its potential in healthcare, particularly in complex radiological interpretations. However, the clinical utility of Gen-AI requires thorough validation with real-world data.
Among 184 confirmed malignant lung tumor cases, diagnostic accuracy varied significantly across three models. Gemini achieved highest accuracy, followed by Claude-3-opus, both exceeding 90%, while GPT scored lowest at 65.22%. Statistical analysis confirmed Gemini's diagnostic accuracy in single-image tasks significantly exceeded Claude and GPT. However, Gemini's ...
2025-07-30
Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT can be used to write convincing but biased peer reviews that are nearly impossible to distinguish from human writing, a new study reveals. This poses a serious threat to the integrity of scientific publishing, where peer review is the critical process for vetting research quality and accuracy.
In a study evaluating the risks of AI in academic publishing, a team of researchers from China tasked the AI model Claude with reviewing 20 real cancer research manuscripts. ...
2025-07-30
T cell senescence occurs in the TME, affecting cancer prognosis and immunotherapy efficacy. The TME induces T cell senescence through multiple pathways, including persistent stimulation by tumor-associated antigens, metabolic pathway alterations, activation of chronic inflammatory responses, proliferation of immunosuppressive cells, and T cell damage caused by tumor radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Senescent T cells exhibit characteristics such as genomic instability, protein imbalance, functional subgroup distribution and proportion imbalance, mitochondrial dysfunction with metabolic disorders, and epigenetic changes. Additionally, in the TME, crosstalk between senescent T cells and other immune ...
2025-07-30
In low-resource settings, babies born with gastroschisis — a congenital condition in which the developing intestines extend outside the body through a hole in the abdominal wall —face life-threatening challenges. While survival rates in high-income countries now exceed 90% thanks to advanced medical tools and neonatal care, infants in resource-constrained medical settings still face high mortality rates, partially because of a lack of access to the lifesaving equipment needed to treat the condition.
A team of engineers ...
2025-07-30
Drivers are not the only ones to blame for roadway fatalities.
That's the crux of a review article in the New England Journal of Medicine written by a pair of Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) researchers invited to share their insights on the strategies aimed at progressing toward a future with zero traffic deaths.
Utilizing publicly available data, research publications, and their own expertise, Charlie Klauer and Zac Doerzaph evaluated the safety treatments and countermeasures that apply to what is known as the Safe System Approach, a framework that broadly embraces the concept that road users are not solely responsible ...
2025-07-30
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
5 p.m. Eastern Time
Media Contact:
NIH Office of Communications and Public Liaison
(301) 496-5787
Beta-HPV can directly cause skin cancer in immunocompromised people
NIH case study finds virus drives creation of cancer cells in context of defective T cells
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have shown for the first time that a type of human papillomavirus (HPV) commonly found on the skin can directly cause a form of skin cancer called cutaneous squamous cell ...
2025-07-30
Multi-institutional team, including physicians and researchers who successfully proposed updates to national guidelines, share important next steps for reevaluating how occupational impairment is determined
Last July, a team of physicians and researchers successfully proposed modifications to the American Medical Association (AMA) Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, advocating against the use of race in lung function testing. In a new publication in The New England Journal of Medicine, the team describes the history of how race and pulmonary function testing have been used to quantify lung function impairment, which often determines ...
2025-07-30
Each year, thousands of patients worldwide receive CAR-T cell therapy for blood cancers, achieving remarkable success in treating previously incurable conditions. However, concerns about secondary primary malignancies (SPMs) following this revolutionary treatment have prompted global regulatory attention. In a study published in eClinicalMedicine, a group of researchers from China examined the largest dataset to date analyzing secondary cancer risks after CAR-T therapy.
"CAR-T therapy has transformed the treatment landscape for refractory blood cancers, ...
2025-07-30
Tumor hypoxia refers to the gradual decrease in ATP production when oxygen levels drop below a critical threshold, contributing to malignant tumor development. Studies show hypoxia-induced changes play an indispensable role in tumor progression, enabling tumors to become invasive or metastatic. However, hypoxia's effects vary across tumor types, and these mechanistic differences remain unclear.
To address this, we developed THER (https://smuonco.shinyapps.io/THER/), an online tool that allows analysis of hypoxia-associated transcriptomic data without requiring programming skills. THER contains 63 preprocessed datasets from ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Microbiota boost immunotherapy? A meta-analysis dives into fecal microbiota transplantation and immune checkpoint inhibitors