Microbiome-modulating drugs in carcinogenesis

Prescribed drug use is very common, and long-term risks have rarely been investigated. Our recent work showed that some commonly prescribed drugs may actually increase the risk of cancer.

Proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs), used to protect the stomach against acid-related disorders, were associated with an increased risk of stomach, oesophageal and pancreatic cancer, and potentially even colorectal cancer prognosis.

We postulate that these effects may be caused through changes in the gut microbiome; since PPIs are also the one drug-group with the strongest effect on the gut microbiome composition when investigated at population level.

To assess the effect of PPIs and other so-called microbiome-modulating drugs on cancer, we propose to investigate drug-bug interactions and their effect on cancer risk and prognosis (registry-based and microbiome studies); drug-bug interactions in cancer-patients (registry-based study assessing the risk of C. difficile infection, recurrence and mortality) and drug-bug interactions in a translational/mechanistic study assessing the microbiome composition in young adults who were heavily exposed to antibiotics during early childhood.These studies will be conducted at the Centre for Translational Microbiome Research at Karolinska Institutet, globally one of the most advanced microbiome research facilities with a highly skilled group in microbiome research and clinical epidemiology; with state-of-the-art high-throughput Shotgun sequencing platforms.