The University of Luxembourg and Daiwa Pharmaceutical, a Japanese leading supplier of functional foods, have entered a strategic partnership, along with the Centre Hospitalier Emile Mayrisch and the Luxembourg Institute of Health, with the aim to study dietary supplements for cancer patients and to identify the underlying mechanisms between gut bacteria (microbiome), its derived metabolites and patient immune cells.
The joint project promises to identify new intervention points targeting the crosstalk between the microbiome and its host (i.e. the patient). Ultimately, this work will contribute to the establishment of dietary guidelines for patients undergoing anti-cancer treatments.
This is a new promising area in oncology research and clinical trials are still very rare. Therefore, this study will be crucial in establishing meaningful collaborations between clinicians, researchers and industry.
The joint project, named PREImuno2, is co-funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) through a BRIDGES programme.
The project leader, Dr Elisabeth Letellier, head of the Molecular Disease Mechanisms group, part of the Department of Life Sciences and Medicine, at the Faculty of Sciences, Technology and Medicine, has developed a renowned expertise in host-microbiome interactions in cancer. In the frame of this project and with her team, she will focus on studying the effect of fibre supplementation in humanised microbiome cancer mouse models under immunotherapy treatment. She also aims at identifying novel microbiome-based interventions for cancer patients through computer-based modelling.