Microbial and immunological characteristics of the recipient are associated with beneficial responses to fecal microbiota transfer in patients with cancer immunotherapy-refractory solid tumors
Abstract
Fecal microbiota transfer (FMT) has recently proven to be effective in the treatment of oncologic patients being refractory to cancer immunotherapy (CI). However, the mechanisms of action and factors predicting response to FMT are unknown. Here we performed a prospective interventional clinical trial to investigate the impact of FMT from 4 donors with a complete or partial response to CI on the intestinal microbiome of 14 patients with various solid tumors, who were previously refractory to CI (NCT05273255). We found that high and stable microbiome -diversity, the presence of lysozyme+ monocytes within the intestinal tissue, elevated CD8+ T-cells and T-cell receptor diversity in the recipients’ circulation at baseline are associated with FMT benefit in combination with CI. Our findings demonstrate that FMT is a promising therapeutic option for patients with solid tumors, and that the response appears to depend on recipient-related, rather than donor-related characteristics.
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