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Pancreatic cancer

Tryptophan metabolite improves PDAC response rates and survival

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 23, page 272 (2023)Cite this article

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Response rates to first-line chemotherapy for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remain poor: below 50%. Tintelnot et al. show that high serum levels of indole 3-acetic acid (3-IAA), a gut microbiota-derived metabolite of tryptophan, amplify the response to chemotherapy and are associated with improved survival in patients with PDAC and in animal models.

After finding that patients with PDAC who did or did not respond to chemotherapy had different microbiota profiles, and that PDAC tumours were smaller in chemotherapy-treated mice colonized with gut microbiota from patients who responded to treatment than those in mice colonized with microbiota from non-responder patients, the researchers conducted a targeted metabolomic screen that identified 3-IAA as the most highly enriched metabolite in responder versus non-responder patients. Moreover, serum 3-IAA levels were increased in mice colonized with microbiota from responders compared with mice colonized with microbiota from non-responders, a finding associated with an increased microbiotal contribution of 3-IAA-producing Bacteroides species.

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  1. Nature Reviews Cancer http://www.nature.com/nrc/

    Caroline Barranco

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  1. Caroline Barranco
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Correspondence to Caroline Barranco.

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Barranco, C. Tryptophan metabolite improves PDAC response rates and survival. Nat Rev Cancer 23, 272 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41568-023-00566-6

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