According to scientists from the Francis Crick Institute, the National Cancer Institute, and Aalborg University, vitamin D helps in improving cancer immunity in mice by growing special gut bacteria.
To study the connection between vitamin D and cancer immunity, the scientists divided mice into two groups - one group was given a vitamin D-rich diet and other was given a normal diet.
On observing the group having vitamin-D rich food, scientists noted that vitamin D acted on the epithelial cells in the intestine, leading to the growth of bacteria called Bacteroides fragilis. The findings published in the journal Science, revealed that the growth of bacteria boosted cancer immunity in mice. The same bacteria were later injected in the second group of mice following a normal diet. Those mice also became resistant to cancer.
"What we've shown here came as a surprise - vitamin D can regulate the gut microbiome to favor a type of bacteria which gives mice better immunity to cancer," says Caetano Reis e Sousa, head of the Immunobiology Laboratory at the Crick and senior study author.
"This could one day be important for cancer treatment in humans, but we don't know how and why vitamin D has this effect via the microbiome. More work is needed before we can conclusively say that correcting a vitamin D deficiency has benefits for cancer prevention or treatment," she continued.
To analyze the effect of bacteria in human beings, the scientists studied a dataset regarding 1.5 million Danish people and found that higher level of vitamin D lowers the risk of cancer.
"These findings contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the role of microbiota in cancer immunity and the potential of dietary interventions to fine-tune this relationship for improved patient outcomes. However, further research is warranted to fully understand the underlying mechanisms and how they can be harnessed to develop personalized treatment strategies," concluded Romina Goldszmid, Stadtman Investigator in NCI's Center For Cancer Research.
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