How the Tumor Microbiome Plays a Role in the Lung Adenocarcinoma Immune Microenvironment

Ivania Valdés Araya, a PhD student at Universidad Mayor in Chile, discusses her research on the role of the tumor microbiome in the lung adenocarcinoma immune microenvironment.

“We wanted to know which part of the bacteria present within the tumors is interacting with the host and describe the mechanisms that are involved in this relationship,” she said.

Ms. Valdés Araya and colleagues presented an abstract titled “Role of the tumor microbiome in the lung adenocarcinoma immune microenvironment through multi meta-omics analysis” during the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024. She explained the results of the study, which were presented during a mini-symposium at the annual meeting.

“We found an increase of some potentially pathogenic bacteria within the adenocarcinoma tumors and some metabolites [that have] already been described as immunosuppressive metabolites and promote this state in the patient,” Ms. Valdés Araya said.

She spoke about the interpretation of these results and future directions for the research.

“We think that they are very exciting results since you can take this to prove it in vitro or in vivo to check that they are promoting these states and [are] actually contributing to a worse disease outcome for the patients,” Ms. Valdés Araya said. “What we want to try to do is… transcriptomics to see the gene expression of some of the proteins that we already found and the metabolites.”