The Microbiome: Potential for Cancer Detection and Treatment

The gut is comprised of numerous types of bacteria, fungi, protists, and viruses. The complex of all these is coined as the microbiome, which has been long overlooked as a key for the treatment of certain physiological ailments such as cancer, psychological disorders, and other diseases for a long time. However, recent research has aided in the understanding that the microbiome holds many secrets to many different questions pertaining to physiological healing. In a paper by Martha Hotz Vitaterna and research associates, improvements in sleep recovery were found through alterations of the microbiome with the use of a prebiotic diet including galactooligosaccharides and polydextrose. One bacteria, Parabacteroids Distanosis (PD), is known as a marker for quantity sleep. Their experiments included exposing the animal subjects to stress during sleep, increasing sleep deprivation which then decreased levels of PD. They found through implementing this prebiotic diet increased levels of PD five to seven times of levels while the animals were exposed to stress, essentially concluding that through correlation the addition of prebiotics increased bacteria that aided in sleep recovery during times of stress-induced sleep deprivation. If the microbiome can be manipulated to improve the physiological condition of sleep deprivation, why can't it also be used to treat actual physiological disorders like cancer?

Cancer is one of the main leading causes of death throughout the world. For long cancer has been treated through the usage of developed drugs in poison cancerous cells. Immunotherapy has been used for a long time as an additional method of treatment, but lately, a lot of promising research between the microbiome and immune response has led to exciting outlooks on cancer screening and its treatment. Specific bacteria have even been identified for certain cancers and bacterial or viral infections. In addition, tumor tissue has been found to contain traces of microbial DNA residues, essentially proving that the microbiome is involved in the health-prospective immunotherapy treatment of cancer itself. "The microbiota produces metabolites, metabolizing nutrients and producing toxins that can block pathogenic invaders, restrict their growth, produce beneficial microbial products and metabolize that nutrients and poisons from invading species." On the other hand, the microbiota can even nourish the health of certain cancers or be signals of potential cancerous habitats or cancer itself. Thus microbiomes have in some sense a direct link to cancer development, prognosis, and treatment. 

Current treatment of cancer is going in the direction of immunotherapy which can be very beneficial to some patients, but has its challenges because many cancers have "circulatory abnormalities that help elude them from detection of the immune system (Microbiome in Cancer, Rahman)". Most methods include using drugs that have been developed to change tumor vasculature back to that which can be recognized by the body's immune system. Understanding the essential connection between the microbiome and the immune system allows doctors and researchers to use nanotechnology (detection of biology at a nanoscale) to not only better understand but have the potential to control and manipulate microenvironments of the gut and allow for potential new methods to influence that immune system and weaponize the microbiome against cancer. However, much further research is needed before the implementation of such methods could be used due to the complexity of the microbiome with age, macroenvironmental impact, and nutritional patterns of patients. Cancer is essentially rogue cells altered by something, someplace, somewhere in time. It is an unwanted part of us but it importantly capitalizes on the same interconnectedness of the bodily system (the microbiome) as many others do. Through macrobiotic research, the world is understanding why cancer succeeds, but importantly, gives us insight into how to outsmart it, treat it, and eliminate it. 

References

1) Rahman, Mominur, et al. "Microbiome in Cancer: Role in Carcinogenesis and Impact in Therapeutic Strategies." Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy = Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 18 Dec. 2021 htt[://PubMed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/353814487/.

2) Summa, Keith C., et al. "522 a Prebiotic Diet Alters the Fecal Microbiome and Metabolome, Improves Sleep in Response to Sleep Disruption, and Promotes Stress Resilience in Rats." Gastroenterology, vol. 160, no. 6, 24 May 2022, http://doi.org/10/1016/s0016-5085(21)00997-5.