Opinion
Video
Laura Bukavina, MD, on microbiome-based biomarkers for treatment response
Author(s):
“[We’re working on] being able to apply the same mechanism and testing and thought that we put into this into stool to give people a precision signature of how they're going to respond or experience toxicity from EV based on their stool microbiome,” says Laura Bukavina, MD, MPH.
In this video, Laura Bukavina, MD, MPH, outlines microbial species/pathways that could serve as potential biomarkers for treatment response based on findings from the study, “Genome-scale metabolic reconstruction of urinary microbiome: Pathway for personalized medicine.” These data were presented at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary (ASCO GU) Cancers Symposium in San Francisco, California.
Bukavina is an assistant professor of urologic oncology and the translational science lead in GU oncology at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
Video Transcript:
So, E. coli is one of the most common ones that you think of. There are metabolizers of gemcitabine, and E. coli is a pathogen that a lot of us have. Even if you don't have an active UTI, it's sometimes asymptomatic or present in tissue. That's one of the ones of the most commonly that we see being able to break down gemcitabine.
To pivot along the point of gemcitabine, we are also expanding this study, and this is not presented here. We're expanding this into stool testing. That's important because the current antibody drug conjugate, EV, gets excreted into bile. It's being broken down by the bacteria that's in your actual colon. [We’re working on] being able to apply the same mechanism and testing and thought that we put into this into stool to give people a precision signature of how they're going to respond or experience toxicity from EV based on their stool microbiome. That's something that we're also working in parallel with.
This transcript was AI generated and edited by human editors for clarity.
