Scientific Publications
The microbiota, antibiotics and breast cancer
Breast Cancer Management
There are several important considerations to be addressed to provide clear guidance in the clinic for healthcare professionals to enhance positive outcomes in patients. These include:
We need to understand what a balanced microbiota looks like when it comes to dictating breast cancer outcomes. This will only come with further fundamental research into what the microbiota looks like in both mouse models and breast cancer patients. Importantly, it is essential we understand not only ‘who’ is present (e.g. through metagenomic sequencing), but also ‘what’ they can do (e.g. through transcriptional and/or metabolic profiling).
It is clear there are no firm guidelines on what antibiotics should be prescribed prophylactically to prevent surgical site infections. Thus, we need a better understanding of how different antibiotic regiments might influence breast cancer progression (via gut microbiota-induced disturbances) with preclinical models a natural choice for teasing these potentially complex effects.
We must also systematically interrogate and integrate the multiple cellular and molecular pathways that come together to govern the microbiota–breast cancer axis. Only by doing so will we understand how we might therapeutically intervene to realign the pathways after antibiotic-induced disturbances occur.
Breast Cancer Management
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