Oral Presentation 18th International Congress on Photobiology 2024

Enhanced phototherapeutic efficacy through microbial modulation in cutaneous T-cell lymphoma delays tumour growth and increases survival in the murine EL4 model (#66)

Saptaswa Dey 1 , Pablo Augusto Vieyra-Garcia 1 , Aaroh Anand Joshi 1 , Slave Trajanoski 2 , Peter Wolf 1 3
  1. Medical University Of Graz, Graz, STYRIA, Austria
  2. Core Facility Computational Bioanalytics, Medical University Of Graz, Graz, Styria, Austria
  3. BioTechMed, Graz, Styria, Austria

Cutaneous T-cell lymphomas (CTCL), particularly in forms like mycosis fungoides and Sézary syndrome, present unique challenges due to their pathological interactions with microbial elements and resistance to conventional therapies. Our research explores the impact of phototherapeutic interventions combined with targeted microbial modulation on disease progression in CTCL. EL4 T-cell lymphoma cells were intradermally grafted on the back of C57BL/6 mice. Animals were treated with conventional therapeutics such as psoralen + UVA (PUVA) or UVB in the presence or absence of topical antibiotic treatment (neomycin, bacitracin, and polymyxin B sulphate) as an adjuvant. Microbial colonization of the skin was assessed to correlate with disease severity and tumor growth. Triple antibiotic treatment significantly delayed tumour occurrence (p = 0.026), which prolonged the survival of the mice (p = 0.033). Allocation to phototherapeutic agents PUVA, UVB, or none of these, along with antibiotic intervention, reduced the tumour growth significantly (p = 0.0327, p ≤ 0.0001, p ≤ 0.0001 respectively). Upon modulating the skin microbiome by antibiotic treatment, we saw an increase in commensal Clostridium species, e.g., Lachnospiraceae sp. (p = 0.0008), Ruminococcaceae sp. (p = 0.0001)., Blautia sp. (p = 0.007) and a significant reduction in facultative pathogens Corynebacterium sp. (p = 0.0009), Pelomonas sp. (p = 0.0306), Streptococcus sp. (p ≥ 0.0001), Pseudomonas sp. (p = 0.0358), and Cutibacterium sp. (p = 0.0237). Intriguingly, we observed a significant decrease in Staphylococcus aureus frequency (p = 0.0001) but an increase in the overall detection frequency of the Staphylococcus genus, indicating that antibiotic treatment helped regain the microbial balance and increased the number of non-pathogenic Staphylococcus populations. Our findings suggest a synergistic strategy combining microbial modulation with phototherapy could support the management of CTCL, providing a dual front in the battle against this malignancy by both enhancing therapeutic outcomes and mitigating resistance pathways.