Ricerc@Sapienza

Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors (ICIs) are improving the survival of cancer patients, however only the 20-30% of treated patients present clinical benefits .Toxicity represents the major cause of reduced dosage, delayed drug administration and therapy discontinuation. Hence in the context of multiple treatment possibilities, the identification of predictive markers of response and toxicity is a challenging approach for drug selection in order to obtain the best clinical benefit while minimizing the side effects. Although the immune related side effects have become manageable to some extent by the use of corticosteroid therapy, new predictive indicators of response and toxicity are necessary to improve the management and the compliance to immunotherapy. The changes occurring in the microbiota composition has been proposed as one of the possible mechanism potentially explaining the pathogenesis of immune related toxicity.
The objective of this research project is to identify association between microbiome profile, toxicity and response to ICI treatment in patients affected by non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).