‘Poop’ pills to be tested for treatment of pancreatic cancer

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London researchers are launching a clinical trial to see if pills containing beneficial microbes from poop can help save the lives of pancreatic cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

Scientists at Lawson Research Institute, the research institute at St. Joseph’s Health Care London, and London Health Sciences Centre Research Institute (LHSCRI), are launching a Phase 1 clinical trial involving 20 patients recruited at LHSC’s Verspeeten Family Cancer Centre.

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“Pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest to treat,” said John Lenehan, a scientist at LHSCRI and medical oncologist.

“There’s some good pre-clinical evidence that it might make some of our chemo drugs work better, and stimulate the immune system. We want to try to bring something to our patients that we think is going to help.”

The human gut is home to microbes that play a significant role in people’s health and immune system response. In cancer patients, this symphony of beneficial microbes is disrupted, said Saman Maleki, a scientist at LHSCRI.

The London researchers are redeploying fecal microbes from healthy donors, in oral capsule form, to pancreatic cancer patients to boost their gut health and immune response, enhancing their body’s ability to fight the disease, Maleki said.

This clinical trial will test whether the poop pills are safe for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, Lenehan said. It also will track study patient outcomes as they go through treatment.

The two-year trial is the first step toward another study, involving many more patients, to test whether the poop pills are leading to better outcomes than just chemotherapy alone, Lenehan said.

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“That will allow us to measure differences in outcomes,” he said.

Patients in the study will receive the capsules once at the start of their cancer treatment regime. The feces is processed in a lab so only the beneficial gut bacteria remains, without any taste or odour. The microbes are then placed in the caplets – called LND101 – and frozen.

The pancreatic cancer clinical trial is not the first time London researchers have used fecal microbes in a bid to improve the efficacy of cancer treatments.

London researchers launched a study in 2019 to see if the beneficial poop microbes could improve the effectiveness of immunotherapy drugs, medication that stimulates the body’s immune system to attack and kill cancer cells, in patients with melanoma, a potentially deadly form of skin cancer.

The team found the pills resulted in less treatment toxicity for patients and an improved treatment response.

The research team also is searching for healthy people who are willing to donate stool for the study.

More information is available by calling 519-646-6100, ext. 65739 or emailing Liesl De Silva at [email protected].

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