Recently, studies on the relationship between gut dysbiosis and Parkinson’s disease (PD) have increased, but whether a specific gut bacterium may cause PD remains unexplored. Here, we report, for the first time, that a specific gut bacterium directly induces PD symptoms and dopaminergic neuronal damage in the mouse brain. We found that the number of Enterobacteriaceae, particularly Proteus mirabilis, markedly and commonly increased in PD mouse models. Administration of P. mirabilis isolated from PD mice significantly induced motor deficits, selectively caused dopaminergic neuronal damage and inflammation in substantia nigra and striatum, and stimulated α-synuclein aggregation in the brain as well as in the colon. We found that lipopolysaccharides, a virulence factor of P. mirabilis, may be associated in these pathological changes via gut leakage and inflammatory actions. Our results suggest a role of P. mirabilis on PD pathogenesis in the brain.
We demonstrated that in vitro drug responses in patient-derived organoids (PDOs) are correlated to clinical responses to targeted therapies in individual patients with advanced lung adenocarcinoma and PDOs can be used to identify effective anti-cancer therapies for novel molecular targets. PDOs recapitulated progression-free survival and objective responses of NSCLC patients receiving clinically approved targeted agents. PDOs also predicted activity of therapeutic strategies under clinical investigation. YUO-071 harboring an EGFR exon 19 deletion and a BRAF G464A mutation and the matching patient responded to dabrafenib/trametinib combination therapy. YUO-004 and YUO-050 harboring an EGFR L747P mutation was sensitive to afatinib, consistent with the response in the matching patient of YUO-050. Furthermore, we utilized organoids to demonstrate preclinical efficacy of poziotinib against ERBB2 exon 20 insertions and pralsetinib against RET-fusions. Our findings suggest utility of PDOs in clinical decision making and development of therapeutic strategies.
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