The triple interactions between gut microbiota, mycobiota and host immunity

Abstract

The gut microbiome is mainly composed of microbiota and mycobiota, both of which play important roles in the development of the host immune system, metabolic regulation, and maintenance of intestinal homeostasis. With the increasing awareness of the pathogenic essence of infectious, immunodeficiency, and tumor-related diseases, the interactions between gut bacteria, fungi, and host immunity have been shown to directly influence the disease process or final therapeutic outcome, and collaborative and antagonistic relationships are commonly found between bacteria and fungi. Interventions represented by probiotics, prebiotics, engineered probiotics, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), and drugs can effectively modulate the triple interactions. In particular, traditional probiotics represented by Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus and next-generation probiotics represented by Akkermansia muciniphila and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii showed a high enrichment trend in the gut of patients with a high response to inflammation remission and tumor immunotherapy, which predicts the potential medicinal value of these beneficial microbial formulations. However, there are bottlenecks in all these interventions that need to be broken. Meanwhile, further unraveling the underlying mechanisms of the “triple interactions” model can guide precise interventions and ultimately improve the efficiency of interventions on the host gut microbiome and immune modulation, thus directly or indirectly improving anti-inflammatory and tumor immunotherapy effects.

Graphical Abstract

HIGHLIGHTS

• Gut microbiota and mycobiota significantly influence the host disease pathology and therapeutic efficacy in a cooperative or antagonistic manner.

• Probiotics represented by Bifidobacterium spp. are highly enriched in the gut of patients with a high response to immunotherapy implies that probiotics have medicinal potential.

Keywords:

• Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT)
• gut microbiome
• host immunity
• tumor immunotherapy
• probiotics

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.