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Gut microbiome can predict chemoradiotherapy efficacy in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

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Abstract

Purpose

The gut microbiome plays an important role in cancer pathogenesis and therapy. Some studies have reported that specific bacteria in tumor tissues may contribute to the prognosis and treatment of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). However, there is limited evidence that the gut microbiome is associated with ESCC. This study assessed the utility of the gut microbiome as a predictive marker of the therapeutic effect in patients with ESCC undergoing chemo-radiotherapy (CRT).

Patients and methods

Fecal samples were collected from 51 patients with ESCC who had never undergone treatment between April 2021 and May 2022 in the Department of Frontier Surgery, Chiba University. The gut microbiome was analyzed using 16S metagenomics sequencing. The association between the gut microbiome composition and stage according to the TNM classification (American Joint Committee on Cancer 7.0) and CRT response according to the RECIST criteria was evaluated.

Results

The relative abundance of Fusobacteriaceae was enriched in cStage III-IVb group. Among the 27 patients who received CRT, the relative abundance of Lactobacillaceae was enriched in those with a partial and complete response. Lactobacillaceae also did not correlate with any clinical data, but the high Lactobacillales group had a higher LMR (P = 0.032) and lower PLR (P = 0.045) than in the low Lactobacillales group.

Conclusions

In conclusion, we found that the relative abundance of Lactobacillaceae was enriched in patients with a partial or complete response among CRT those with ESCC, thus suggesting that the relative abundance of Lactobacillaceae can predict the effect of CRT.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Keiko Iida (Department of Frontier Surgery, Chiba university graduate school of medicine) for assistance with the Ion Torrent library preparation and sequencing. And also, we thank Akiko Suganami and Yutaka Tamura (Department of Bioinformatics, Chiba university graduate school of medicine) for help our statistical analysis.

Funding

This work was supported by JPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP 20H03749.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Frontier Surgery, Chiba University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-8-1 Inohana, Chuo-Ku, Chiba-Shi, Chiba, 260-8670, Japan

    Takuma Sasaki, Yasunori Matsumoto, Kentaro Murakami, Satoshi Endo, Takeshi Toyozumi, Ryota Otsuka, Kazuya Kinoshita, Jie Hu, Shinichiro Iida, Hiroki Morishita, Yuri Nishioka, Akira Nakano, Masaya Uesato & Hisahiro Matsubara

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  1. Takuma Sasaki
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  2. Yasunori Matsumoto
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Correspondence to Yasunori Matsumoto.

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Ethical statement

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the ethics committee of Chiba University Hospital and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1964 and later versions. Informed consent or substitute for it was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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No conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.

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Sasaki, T., Matsumoto, Y., Murakami, K. et al. Gut microbiome can predict chemoradiotherapy efficacy in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Esophagus 20, 691–703 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10388-023-01004-0

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