Johanna Joyce: Does the gut microbiome influence metastasis?
Johanna Joyce, Professor at the , shared a post on LinkedIn about a paper she co-authored with colleagues published in iScience:
“Excited to share our latest paper.
In our lab, we are investigating the complexity of the tumor microenvironment – to uncover systemic factors that shape cancer progression and therapy resistance.
So we naturally wanted to ask – does the gut microbiome influence metastasis?
What we found:
- Disrupting the gut microbiome (e.g., with antibiotics, or under germ-free conditions) slowed brain metastasis formation in preclinical models of metastatic cancer
- A specific gut genus, Alistipes, emerged as a potential contributor
- A bacterial metabolite, kynurenine (KYNA), modified how cancer cells interact with brain blood vessels in cell culture models, possibly explaining the reduced metastasis
What’s next:
Our findings indicate that the microbiome indeed plays a role in shaping the brain tumor microenvironment. Could targeting microbiome-derived metabolites help control metastasis? We’re looking forward to explore this further..
This was led by an amazing postdoc, Matteo Massara (now a senior scientist at IOR Bellinzona), from its inception through many years of creativity, dedication, and hard work to complete this project – congratulations.
Special thanks also to all the incredible co-authors: Michelle Ballabio who worked alongside Matteo during her master thesis on this project, bringing lots of enthusiasm and insight; Bastien Dolfi for doing important experiments during the revision period, just after starting his postdoc with us; to other great students who helped along the way – Vladimir Wischnewski, Eleni Lamprou and Rui Santalla Méndez from my group; to our super collaborators here in the incredible core facilities at UNIL/ Agora – Joao Lourenco, Stéphanie Claudinot, Hector Gallart-Ayala, Julijana Ivanisevic, Annamaria Kauzlaric, and Nadine Fournier; and finally many thanks to Jennifer Wargo, Golnaz Morad, and Nadim Ajami at MDACC Houston for all our discussions and your key input on this project over many years!
And finally, sincere appreciation to our funders – without your support, this would not have been possible!
The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research (ASPIRE award), Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, University of Lausanne, Italian Association of Cancer Research (AIRC) and Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 800924, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Sklodowska Curie grant agreement (no. 955951, Evomet ITN), the US National Institute of Health/ National Cancer Institute, and the Stand Up to Cancer Convergence Grant.”
Authors: Matteo Massara, Michelle Ballabio, Bastien Dolfi, Jennifer Wargo, Johanna Joyce et al.
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