A UF team found that when they transplanted feces from humans with lung cancer that responded to immunotherapy into mice that did not, the mice responded to the treatment. The team reverse-engineered the “effective” microbiota and identified six bacterial strains that, when given to mice with lung tumors, boosted the mice’s response to immunotherapy.

“We created a pipeline to harvest the therapeutic potential of the microbiota through specific steps to get to an active molecule,” says Christian Jobin. They identified a metabolite called Bac429 that, when injected into the tumors of mice with highly non-responsive lung cancer, the mice had 50% less tumor growth after immunotherapy.

• Christian Jobin