BioCentury
ARTICLE | Distillery Therapeutics

Cancer

June 13, 2018 6:20 PM UTC

Mouse studies suggest primary bile acids or depletion of gut microbiota could help treat liver tumors by increasing hepatic natural killer T (NKT) cell infiltration. In mouse models of liver cancer and thymoma that metastasize to the liver, depletion of gut microbiota with an antibiotic cocktail increased the number of hepatic NKT cells and decreased the number and size of liver tumors compared with vehicle. In a mouse model of melanoma that metastasizes to the liver or lung, depletion of gut microbiota with the cocktail decreased the number and size of liver metastases, but not lung metastases, compared with vehicle. Also in the melanoma model, vancomycin plus the primary bile acid chenodeoxycholic acid increased the number of hepatic NKT cells and decreased the number of liver metastases compared with vancomycin alone, whereas vancomycin plus tauro-ω-muricholic, a secondary bile acid produced by gut microbiota, had no effect on the number of hepatic NKT cells or the number of liver metastases. Next steps could include testing other primary bile acids in liver tumor models.

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