Billions of bacteria live in our gut. They help with digestion, influence the immune system and could even help make cancer therapies more effective in the future. This is exactly what an international research team led from Dresden is investigating.
The project is called METRICs and is coordinated by Dr. Mohamed Elgendy, a researcher at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Faculty of Medicine at TU Dresden. The European funding programme ERA-NET Transcan is providing around €2 million. This makes METRICs the largest project funded under this scheme since its launch in 2011. Seven partner institutions across three continents are working together to develop new cancer treatment strategies.
Data from hundreds of patients
As part of METRICs, samples from around 400 cancer patients are being analyzed at three study centers. Using advanced analytical methods, researchers can measure thousands of metabolites and genes simultaneously. This allows them to identify changes in the body that determine whether a therapy is effective. The aim is to develop new treatment strategies that can be tested in clinical trials. In the long term, the goal is more personalized cancer medicine – therapies tailored more precisely to individual patients.
Researchers worldwide are now intensively studying how the microbiome influences the course of cancer. Early findings suggest that gut bacteria can play a key role in the success of immunotherapies. The METRICs project goes one step further by examining the microbiome, metabolism and therapy response together. At the same time, the research is still at an early stage. Only clinical studies will show whether these findings can be translated into new treatments for patients.
