CIR’s Anderson Group has published research showing the impact of chemotherapy on the gut microbiome and intestinal health. Chemotherapy, while an essential tool for tackling many forms of cancer, is known to cause harmful side effects on the body. Commonly these side effects include digestive system issues, regardless of where in the body the cancer was. What’s really frustrating to me is the idea that there are effective chemotherapies that can kill a patient’s tumour but can’t be used because of how bad the side effects are. We have to try and understand how that happens so that those patients don’t have to choose between cancer or quality of life. Dr CJ Anderson In partnership with the VIB-Ghent University, Belgium, Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), and Washington University School of Medicine, USA, Dr CJ Anderson and his team have identified a mechanism by which this might be happening. Their research showed that chemotherapy drugs kill intestinal cells, which then release substances that fuel the growth of a particular family of bacteria, the Enterobacteriaceae. The study also showed that by preventing the cell death in the first place, or controlling the overgrowth of these bacteria, recovery from chemotherapy can be sped up. This offers new possible treatments to improve quality of life for cancer patients. Our work now places the process of cell death at the centre of intestinal disease. The death process itself doesn’t drive disease directly- our cells die all of the time, that’s not a bad thing. Instead, it is these bacteria feeding off of our dead cells that is the problem. Dr CJ Anderson The Anderson Lab studies how host microbe interactions influence intestinal injury and repair. The lab uses both host and microbe-centric approaches to identify the critical points of communication between intestinal bacterial and mammalian epithelial cells. The lab is particularly interested in understanding how changes to mammalian metabolism influences our intestinal bacteria during infections, excessive inflammation, and in response to tissue injury. The whole Anderson Lab, including Priscilla Chin, Sam Benson, Sebastian Rogatti, Mariska Simpson, and Anna Davey contributed to this work. This whole project couldn’t have happened in isolation within one particular lab. We really needed the collective skills and experience of everyone involved to figure this out. Dr CJ Anderson This work was a collaboration between the UK University of Edinburgh, the Belgian Ghent University, the Luxembourg Institute of Health, and the US Washington University School of Medicine. Read the published paper on ScienceDirect Anderson Lab page Read the LIH press release This article was published on 2024-09-10
