A new paper from an interdisciplinary team at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center describes how the bacteria Porphyromonas gingivalis interferes with chemotherapy-induced mitophagy, allowing oral cancer tumors to become resistant to the drug's effects. Besim Ogretmen, Ph.D.
, SmartState Endowed Chair in Lipidomics and Drug Discovery in the College of Medicine, and Ӧzlem Yilmaz, D.D.S.
, Ph.D., a professor, clinician-scientist and microbiologist in the College of Dental Medicine, worked with graduate student Megan Sheridan and other Hollings researchers to uncover how P.
gingivalis promotes chemotherapy resistance. Their paper was published in iScience . P.
gingivalis is a bacterium found in the mouth. In a healthy mouth, P. gingivalis and other disease-causing bacteria are kept in check by beneficial bacteria.
But when that balance is disrupted, P. gingivalis is a major contributor to periodontitis – severe gum disease that can destroy gums and the bones holding the teeth in place. P.
gingivalis can enter and survive inside the first lining cells of mucosa in the mouth, and then the microorganism can invade deeper tissue and spread systemically. Increasingly, it is being implicated in other diseases like Alzheimer's, diabetes and gastrointestinal cancers. It's also been observed that oral cancer patients infected with P.
gingivalis have worse outcomes. This paper maps out how that could be occurring, focusing on how intracellular P. gingivalis prevents ceramide-dependent mitophagy.