Nurturing and modulating gut microbiota with jujube powder to enhance anti-PD-L1 efficiency against murine colon cancer

Abstract The discovery that gut microbiota profoundly influences the efficiency of immune checkpoint blockade therapy in patients inspired the efforts to enhance cancer treatment using live microorganisms to modify gut microbiome. Here we present a new idea of modifying gut microbiota to enhance anti-PD-L1 efficiency, that is, using natural nutrients. In this work, we demonstrate this idea using mouse MC38 colon tumor model and jujube, a most frequently used adjuvant drug in traditional Chinese medicine, as natural nutrient. The enhancing effects of jujube components were examined, as well as the responsive changes of gut microbiota. We found that jujube powder increased the species richness of Lachnospiraceae while decreased the abundance of Prevotellaceae, and improved both the response rate and therapeutic efficiency of anti-PD-L1. These findings are important to apprehend the underpinned mechanism of jujube as immune adjuvants and thus enable a fully display of healthy and medical function of jujube.