The Urinary Microbiome: Role in Bladder Cancer and Treatment

Abstract

Commensal microbes have increasingly been found to be involved in the development and progression of cancer. The recent discovery of the urinary microbiome bolstered the notion that microbes might play a role in bladder cancer. Although microbial involvement in bladder neoplastic transformation and metastatic progression, except schisto somiasis, has not been established, accumulating research suggests that dysbiosis of the urinary microbiome can produce a chronically inflammatory urothelial microenvironment and lead to bladder cancer. In this review, we describe how the urinary microbiome might facilitate the development of bladder cancer by altering the host immune system and the kind of cytokines that are directly involved in these responses. We investigated the therapeutic possibilities of modulating the urinary microbiome, including immune checkpoint therapy. The responsiveness of patients to intravesical Bacillus Calmette-Guerin therapy was evaluated with respect to microbiome composition. We conclude by noting that the application of microbes to orchestrate the inflammatory response in the bladder may facilitate the development of treatments for bladder cancer.