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Study identifies key drivers of microbiome-linked cancer immunotherapy side effect

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Study identifies key drivers of microbiome-linked cancer immunotherapy side effect

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Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh uncovered the unstable immune cells that can cause up to 40% of immunotherapy patients to experience serious side effects and showed that diet and microbiome composition influence the side effect's severity.

The study, published in Cell, found that the inflammation can be reversed in mice by shutting off a protein in "fragile" immune cells.

"Immune-related adverse events are a huge problem and can greatly impact quality of life for patients. In many cases, it impacts their ability to stay on immunotherapy or benefit from treatment," said senior author Abigail Overacre-Delgoffe, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Immunology at Pitt's School of Medicine and member of the Tumor Microenvironment Center at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center.

There are no U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved treatments for immune-related adverse events, a serious side effect of immune checkpoint inhibitors, a type of cancer immunotherapy.

Up to 25% of patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors experience severe adverse events, resulting in hospitalization and ending their treatment. Their variability makes them challenging to study in humans, and animal models have so far failed to replicate the complexity of human immune-related inflammation.

, a postdoctoral associate in Overacre-Delgoffe's lab.



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