Publications by authors named "Marine Mazzenga"
Article Synopsis
- - Biomarkers are necessary to optimize the use of immune-checkpoint blockers (ICB) like pembrolizumab for patients with localized muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), as highlighted by the study on T cells and immune responses.
- - The research identified follicular helper CD4+ T cells (TFH) and specific antibodies against E. coli as potential biomarkers that correlate with better clinical outcomes for patients receiving pembrolizumab treatment.
- - Understanding the connections between tumor infections and immune responses can lead to improved therapeutic strategies and better patient management in the future.
Article Synopsis
- Prostate cancer typically progresses from hormone-sensitive forms to castration-resistant forms despite androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), prompting research into the role of T lymphocytes and gut microbiota in treatment effectiveness.
- In mouse models, ADT improved thymic function and was less effective in mice lacking T lymphocytes or with depleted gut microbiota, showing connections between immune response and therapy outcomes.
- Analysis of prostate cancer patients indicated that long-term ADT increased immune cell output and altered gut microbiota, with the potential for fecal transplants from healthy donors to improve treatment response, highlighting the need for addressing intestinal health in therapy.
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates how memory T cells respond to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its variants, focusing on their link to protection against COVID-19 in healthy and cancer patients.
- Findings suggest that an imbalance in immune responses, particularly between type 1 and type 2 cytokines, increases vulnerability to the virus, especially in individuals with specific deficiencies in T helper 1 (Th1) cells.
- Current vaccines primarily trigger Th1 responses effectively against the original virus strain, highlighting the need for future vaccines to target T-cell responses against the receptor binding domain of new variants.
Article Synopsis
- Gut dysbiosis is linked to both intestinal and extraintestinal cancers; however, the relationship between cancer development and changes in the microbiome is still unclear.
- The study found that cancer can cause damage to the ileal mucosa, leading to changes in gut permeability and a rise in Clostridium species, which are associated with dysbiosis.
- Interventions like β-adrenergic receptor blockers or antibiotics helped prevent the detrimental gut changes linked to tumors, suggesting stress ileopathy is an important condition in cancer that needs targeted treatment.
Patients with cancer are at higher risk of severe coronavirus infectious disease 2019 (COVID-19), but the mechanisms underlying virus-host interactions during cancer therapies remain elusive. When comparing nasopharyngeal swabs from cancer and noncancer patients for RT-qPCR cycle thresholds measuring acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in 1063 patients (58% with cancer), we found that malignant disease favors the magnitude and duration of viral RNA shedding concomitant with prolonged serum elevations of type 1 IFN that anticorrelated with anti-RBD IgG antibodies. Cancer patients with a prolonged SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection exhibited the typical immunopathology of severe COVID-19 at the early phase of infection including circulation of immature neutrophils, depletion of nonconventional monocytes, and a general lymphopenia that, however, was accompanied by a rise in plasmablasts, activated follicular T-helper cells, and non-naive Granzyme BFasL, EomesTCF-1, PD-1CD8 Tc1 cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAccumulating evidence from preclinical studies and human trials demonstrated the crucial role of the gut microbiota in determining the effectiveness of anticancer therapeutics such as immunogenic chemotherapy or immune checkpoint blockade. In summary, it appears that a diverse intestinal microbiota supports therapeutic anticancer responses, while a dysbiotic microbiota composition that lacks immunostimulatory bacteria or contains overabundant immunosuppressive species causes treatment failure. In this review, we explore preclinical and translational studies highlighting how eubiotic and dysbiotic microbiota composition can affect progression-free survival in cancer patients.
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