IMPACTT Newsletter | September 2020

Meet our director - Dr. Kathy McCoy

Cancers and Microbiome: a focus on recent discoveries

• Abiraterone acetate preferentially enriches for the gut commensal Akkermansia muciniphila in castrate-resistant prostate cancer patients. B. A. Daisley, et al. Nat Commun. 2020 Sept 24. Studying the stool microbiome of 68 prostate cancer patients, the authors highlight a possible mechanism for Akkermansia muciniphila in modulating castrate-resistant prostate cancer patients' response to oral therapy.
• Microbiome-derived inosine modulates response to checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy. L. F. Mager, et al. Science. 2020 Sept 18. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the authors identified three bacterial species that significantly enhanced the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors in four mouse models of cancer! This promising study" identifies a novel microbial metabolite-immune pathway that may be exploited to develop microbial-based adjuvant therapies."
• Microbial modulation of intestinal T helper cell responses and implications for disease and therapy. M. B. Geuking & R. Burkhard. Nature Mucosal Immunology. 2020 Aug 13. Reviewing findings in the field of microbiota-intestinal T helper cell crosstalk with a focus on the role of specific commensal bacteria and their metabolites, the authors also highlight the role of microbially-induced CD4 T cells in cancer immune checkpoint blockade therapy.
• Can we harness the microbiota to enhance the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy? Finlay BB, et al. Nat Rev Immunol. 2020 Jul 13. In this viewpoint, Dr. Finlay from UBC and five additional experts of the microbiome field share their thoughts on key questions about the role of microbes in cancer development, outcome, and the challenges for the field in addressing these questions.

New tools for microbiome studies

• MIT biological and mechanical engineers have designed a specialized device in which they can grow oxygen-intolerant bacteria in tissue

• An Ingestible Self-Polymerizing System for Targeted Sampling of Gut Microbiota and Biomarkers

• Of men in mice: the development and application of a humanized gnotobiotic mouse model for microbiome therapeutics

New IMPACTT @-resources

• In need of germ-free tissues? Our biobanks of diverse germ-free mouse tissues prepared for analyses from transcriptomics to histological analysis are now live!
• Check our list of germ-free mouse models available at the International Microbiome Centre.
• Search for your microbes! The Alberta Microbiota Repository, biobanks of microbes collected from diverse body sites is now searchable. The biobank is constantly being expanded so feel free to share your microbes with us!

Draw your research

• Thinking about illustrating your research work? Check out the work of Dr. Yee and Dr. Assié.
• An exciting finding to show? Think about Biorender, the software that powers scientific illustrations to enable you to design your story.