When we looked at stool from breast and lung cancer patients, we discovered that important bacteria were missing from the microbiome,” Culler says. The absence of certain gut microbes, mostly Firmicutes bacteria, could explain why immune checkpoint inhibitors—drugs that block cancer-friendly proteins and help facilitate the immune system’s response to cancer cells—don’t work on some patients. “We believe that those bacteria are important for the immune system to be able to respond to those drugs,” Culler says.
Along with fellow chemical engineer Steve Van Dien, Culler cofounded Persephone Biome in the summer of 2017 to study the relationship between gut bacteria and cancer. Named for Persephone, the Greek goddess of vegetation who appears in the spring and descends back into the underworld after harvesttime, Culler’s company is gearing up for clinical trials that will test specific gut microbes to see if they improve the function of checkpoint inhibitors in breast and non-small cell lung cancer patients. (A second product will focus on CAR-T cell therapy, which uses patients’ own immune cells that have been genetically engineered to treat their cancer.)
“Our goal is to create therapeutics to convert non-responders into responders,” Culler says, referring to patients who do or do not respond to checkpoint inhibitors. Her company hopes to engineer a mix of selected gut bacteria that can be taken in pill form to heal patients’ microbiomes, which can be damaged by antibiotics and poor diet, as she discussed recently in a talk at TEDx San Diego.
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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Cancer
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A new type of cancer therapy that uses a common virus to infect and destroy harmful cells is showing big promise in early human trials, say UK scientists.
One patient's cancer vanished, while others saw their tumours shrink.
The drug is a weakened form of the cold sore virus - herpes simplex - that has been modified to kill tumours.
Larger and longer studies will be needed, but experts say the injection might ultimately offer a lifeline to more people with advanced cancers.
Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:
https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Cancer
https://www.scoop.it/topic/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Research