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Cancer immunotherapy in 2017

The breakthrough of the microbiota

In 2017, epidemiological studies in humans and experiments in mouse models showed that the intestinal microbiota determines the effectiveness of anticancer immunotherapies. As such the microbiota offers new prognostic biomarkers and shows promise as a target for future antineoplastic treatments.

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Figure 1: Impact of bacteria on immuno-oncology.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are supported by grants from the Institut National contre le Cancer, Ligue Nationale contre le Cancer, Swiss Bridge Foundation, ISREC, RHU-TORINO-LUMIERE, SIRIC Socrates at Gustave Roussy and Seerave Foundation.

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Correspondence to Guido Kroemer or Laurence Zitvogel.

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Competing interests

G.K and L.Z. are co-founders of everImmune, a biotech company that identifies bacteria for cancer treatment.

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Kroemer, G., Zitvogel, L. The breakthrough of the microbiota. Nat Rev Immunol 18, 87–88 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nri.2018.4

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