Experts discuss microbial-tumor interactions in bladder cancer

In this video, Ilaha Isali, MD, MSc, and Laura Bukavina, MD, MPH, MSc, discuss their recent Urologic Oncology paper “State-of-the-Art review: The Microbiome in Bladder Cancer.” Isali is a urology resident at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, New York, and Bukavina is an assistant professor of urologic oncology at Cleveland Clinic Glickman Urologic Institute and the translational science lead in GU oncology at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.

Transcription:

Can you elaborate on the intricate microbial-tumor interactions mentioned in your abstract? How do these dynamics influence the tumor microenvironment and potentially affect cancer progression or treatment outcomes?

Isali: The interplay between the microbiome and bladder cancer is very complex. There is still more research going on in this area, and we still need to get to know more information. Specific microbiome populations such as physio bacterium and campylobacter hominis have been associated with bladder cancer carcinogenesis, potentially through mechanisms such as chronic inflammation, immune modulation, and also epithelial barrier disruption...Furthermore, I would say the altered microbiome diversity observed in bladder cancer tissue and urine samples suggest that microbiome ecosystems can influence the tumor progression and also treatment response. I think understanding these dynamics could potentially provide novel therapeutic targets and also biomarkers to improve patient outcomes, specifically in patients with bladder cancer.

Bukavina: Within the tumor, we know for a fact that there are microbes, just like multiple tissues in your body, there are microbes within it, and we know that the cancer itself is what's called a hypoxic environment, meaning that oxygen at the core of cancer is low. There are certain bacteria that dwell on this environment, and certain bacteria that live on the outside. The tumor microenvironment is very dense in different immune cells, and having different bacteria can be beneficial or can be detrimental to the tumor. So part of what I would call a gap in bladder cancer is that, yes, we know that the bacteria exist. Think about bladder, right? It's completely open to the environment. There's urine; there's always bacteria in there. We know that there's bacteria within the tumors, but we don't really know how to modulate those bacteria. We don't really know what they're doing. We don't know how they're responding with the immune cells in the environment. And it's funny to think that even within urology, we use bacteria to treat bladder cancer, and there are still many people who think that bacteria have no effect on bladder cancer, even though we're using BCG, which is a bacteria, to treat bladder cancer. So especially within bladder cancer, I think it's important to understand that we need to keep going forward and understanding the tumor, the micro environment, and the microbial composition of that whole picture.

This transcript was AI generated and edited by human editors for clarity.