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  • Cancer in Translation
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Harnessing the microbiome to restore immunotherapy response

Despite the profound clinical success of immune-checkpoint inhibitors, their effectiveness is limited by intrinsic and acquired resistance. Bullman, Zitvogel and colleagues provide their views on two clinical trials modulating the microbiome of immunotherapy-resistant patients with melanoma via transplantation of fecal microbiota from patients who responded to immunotherapy.

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Fig. 1: First proof of concept of the efficacy of FMT combined with reintroduction of anti-PD-1 in patients with immunotherapy-resistant cancer in two independent phase 1/2 trials.

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Correspondence to Susan Bullman or Laurence Zitvogel.

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Competing interests

S.B. has consulted for GlaxoSmithKline and BiomX; and is on the cancer program–scientific advisory board for BiomX. A.E. has received honoraria from Agenus, Biocad, BMS, BioInvent, CatalYm, CyteImmune, Dash Therapeutics, Ellipses, GlaxoSmithKline, IO Biotech, ISA Pharmaceuticals, Merck/Merck Sharp & Dohme, Nektar, Novartis, Pfizer, Sairopa, SkylineDx, Sellas, TigaTx and TTxDiscovery; and has stock options with CytImmune, Dash Therapeutics, IO Biotech, Sairopa, SkylineDx and Theranovir. C.D.J has consulted for Seres Therapeutics and Azitra. L.Z. is the founder of EverImmune, a biotechnology company involved in the cancer/microbiome space; is a member of the board of directors of Transgene and a member of the scientific advisory boards of Transgene and Sanofi; has research contracts with Daichi Sankyo, TRex, 9 Meters Biopharma and EverImmune; has received honoraria from Transgene; and is an employee of: Gustave Roussy and Faculté de Médecine Paris XI.

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Bullman, S., Eggermont, A., Johnston, C.D. et al. Harnessing the microbiome to restore immunotherapy response. Nat Cancer 2, 1301–1304 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43018-021-00300-x

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