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Two cancer patients were successfully treated with fecal microbiota transplants (FMTs) for colitis caused by immunotherapy, according to a case report published today (November 12) in Nature Medicine. Both patients accepted donors’ gut microbiomes following the procedure and their symptoms cleared up within weeks.
“This is an exciting, small case series that shows the therapeutic potential of fecal microbiota transplant for a relatively common complication of immunotherapy treatment,” says Ami Bhatt, an oncologist who studies the role of microbes in cancer at Stanford
University and who was not involved in this work. “This is the first time that a fecal transplant has been shown to be promising for a therapy-related complication.”
For Bhatt, this initial study is also important because it underscores the severe and often treatment-limiting side effects that can come with immunotherapy and that have implications for how cancer patients fare from these therapies.
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