Gut feeling: Microbes at the heart of cancer therapy (IMAGE)
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Figure 1: Overview of the human microbiome in cancer: from pathogenesis to precision therapy. (A) Cancer pathogenesis and progression: A healthy microbiome or eubiosis supports the intestinal lining leading to health and homeostasis whereas dysbiosis promotes cancer through mechanisms like inflammation, immune modulation and metabolism alteration that triggers tumorigenesis, cell proliferation and metastasis. (B) Therapeutic response and modulation: Favorable microbiome enhances immunotherapy (boosts the effectiveness of check point inhibitors like anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4) and chemotherapy efficacy, reduces tumor and toxicity, while dysbiosis increases therapeutic resistance and toxicity leading to tumor growth and treatment failure. (C) Future directions and precision oncology: Future therapeutic strategies including probiotics, prebiotics to restore healthy microbiome balance, fecal microbiota transplantation from healthy donor to re-seed patient’s microbiome, using synthetic biology to engineer bacteria that can target tumor and using microbiome biomarkers to predict specific treatment for the patient. These strategies leading to precision oncology can provide improved patient outcomes.
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Copyright: © 2026 Saqib et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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