
How gut bacteria change cancer drug activity - dnetesn
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-04-gut-bacteria-cancer-drug.html
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scorpioxy
Interesting. I wonder if there's work being done to combine this approach with
the modeling done for personalized chemo treatment to determine drug
effectiveness against tumor tissues. It feels like combining modeling
techniques for the disease + host would provide the best result.

All I got when I started reading papers and articles describing the function
of gut bacteria in the body is that "it's complicated". So its interesting to
see the words "manipulating gut bacteria".

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dghughes
There is Personalized OncoGenomics (POG).

> ...compares the patient’s normal DNA (each cell’s complete set of
> instructions) with the DNA of their tumours. It also compares the RNA of
> their tumours to reference RNA.

[http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/everything-you-
nee...](http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/everything-you-need-to-know-
about-pog-personalized-oncogenomics-program)

[http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/bc-doctor-
pioneers...](http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/bc-doctor-pioneers-a-
new-approach-to-cancer-treatment)

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09bjb
So, this work was done in C. elegans, a worm, on one class of drug used on
colorectal cancer. So, obviously there's still a long ways to go, but there's
enough noise in the gut bacteria space at this point to know that they're very
important in a variety of ways to our health.

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Clownshoesms
I read a lot in various media, but I'm still ignorant how.

The vagus nerve has been mentioned; does that shuttle nutrients around, or
what?

How exactly do these micros take digested chyme and make this incredibly
efficient alcohol->waste reactor?

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epmaybe
So the vagus nerve, when you sense that you are about to eat, stimulates your
stomach to release enzymes that help break down what you intake. This leads to
a feedback chain that releases and inhibits other enzymes down in your
intestines to further break down this food.

As for the microbes that make up our gut Flora, the simple answer is: they
have different enzymes that break things down. They may have an enzyme that
adds a chemical group to a drug, activating it or inactivating it. It's far
more complicated, and not something I'm very knowledgeable about.

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snowpanda
Maybe this can make antibiotics work better.

