Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplant Outcomes Improve With Diverse Gut Microbes, Immune Cells

NEW YORK – A team from Weill Cornell Medical College, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and elsewhere has demonstrated that interactions between the gut microbial community and the immune system can influence an individual’s response to a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and other blood conditions.

Past studies have suggested ties between microbial diversity and favorable allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HCT) outcomes, or transplants involving stem cells from healthy donors. For their new study, the researchers set out to characterize fecal microbiome features alongside immune cell features and clinical outcomes in allo-HCT recipients — work they presented in Science Translational Medicine on Wednesday.
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