Fig. 1: Patient responsiveness to anti-PD-1 therapy is associated with microbiome immunostimulatory hexa-acylated LPS.
From: Gut microbiota-derived hexa-acylated lipopolysaccharides enhance cancer immunotherapy responses
a, NMDS ordination of patient metagenomes with arrows indicating projected bacterial genera (left) and lpx encoding genes (right; NMDS axis 1 (NMDS1), *P = 0.01447) from patients with melanoma before anti-PD-1 therapy. n = 35. NMDS stress scores were calculated after 1,000 iterations or the best value achieved. Ellipses were drawn with a 95% confidence interval. Boxplots show the distribution of data points (coordinates) within NMDS1 and NMDS axis 2 (NMDS2). b, Taxonomic breakdown of lpx encoding bacteria stacked according to the encoded enzymes for the lipid A tetra-acylated backbone (left) and each level of lipid A acylation as indicated above each stacked bar. c, Phylum-level taxonomic composition of pre-treatment faecal metagenomes from 112 patients with melanoma. The relative abundance of each phylum is given as a proportion of total classified reads, and each phylum is indicated by the fill colour of the stacked bars. d–g, Relative abundance as CPM of total LPS biosynthesis genes (*P = 0.0218) (d) and of lpxL (penta-acylation) (e), lpxJ (hexa-acylation) (f) and lpxM (hexa-acylation) (g) genes (*P = 0.0453) within faecal metagenomes of responder (n = 55) and non-responder (n = 57) patients with metastatic melanoma before treatment with anti-PD-1. Two-tailed t-test with data presented as boxes extending from the 25th to 75th percentiles, bars at medians and whiskers from minimum to maximum in a. Two-tailed Mann–Whitney test with data presented as boxes from the 25th to 75th percentiles, bars at median and whiskers from minimum to maximum in d–g. NS, not significant.
