ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Correlation between gut microbiota and their metabolites and the efficacy of chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy for extensive-stage small cell lung cancer
Wenjing Song 1
Shiwei Liu 2
Dan Zang 1
Wenjuan Meng 2
Chenguang Liu 1
Jun Chen 1
1. The Second Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China
2. Weifang People's Hospital, Weifang, China
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Abstract
Gut microbiota has been reported to be associated with the host's immune system and immunotherapy response, as well as immune-related adverse events (irAEs). Additionally, gut microbial metabolites have various immunomodulatory effects. Our study focused on the differences in gut microbiota and their metabolites between long progression-free survival (PFS) and short PFS in patients with small cell lung cancer before and after chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy. The enrolled patients collected in our department were divided into long PFS and short PFS groups according to whether the PFS was ≥6 months, and the stool samples before and after treatment were analyzed using metagenomics and metabolomics. The results showed that Streptococcus (P = 0.00648), Actinomyces (P = 0.0124), and Roseburia (P = 0.0127) differed between the long and short PFS groups. In the analysis of differential metabolites, we found that indirubin-3'-monoxime (AUC 0.611), stearidonic acid (AUC 0.867), leukotriene B4 (AUC 0.844), trans-cinnamic acid (AUC 0.792), and L-tyrosine (AUC 0.751) could be used as potential biomarkers.
Summary
Keywords
biomarker, efficacy, gut microbiota andmetabolites, Immunotherapy, Small Cell Lung Cancer
Received
11 August 2025
Accepted
26 December 2025
Copyright
© 2025 Song, Liu, Zang, Meng, Liu and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Jun Chen
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