Grant: CIHR Fellowship

The human gut is home to trillions of microbes, called the gut microbiome, which have a profound impact on human health including playing a significant role in the therapeutic success of drugs. However, it remains unresolved how variations in microbial communities across patients impacts host physiology and drug therapy outcomes. Even though anticancer therapies have experienced major advances in the past few decades, there are still a number of obstacles associated with chemotherapy, including high variations in drug responses, metabolism and toxicity. We propose that inter-individual differences of the gut microbiome contribute to variations in anticancer drug metabolism. An understanding of the gut microbiome's contribution to drug metabolism will lead to innovative strategies to enhance chemotherapy and move us closer to personalized medicine.