Vitamin D demonstrates hidden potency that promotes cancer immunity.

LONDON -- According to recent studies, vitamin D may one day help humans prevent lethal kinds of cancer. Scientists from the Francis Crick Institute, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and Aalborg University discovered that vitamin D promotes the growth of a specific type of gut bacteria in mice, enhancing cancer immunity.


More specifically, the study's authors discovered that feeding mice a vitamin D-rich diet increased their immunological resistance to transplanted tumours and boosted their responses to immunotherapy treatment. This impact persisted even after scientists employed gene editing to eliminate a protein that binds to vitamin D in the blood and keeps it out of tissues.


To their astonishment, the researchers discovered that vitamin D affects on epithelial cells in the colon, resulting in an increase in the quantity of Bacteroides fragilis. That bacteria enhanced the mice's immunity to cancer. The study discovered that transplanted tumours grew less, however the exact reason for this is unknown.

To see if the bacteria alone can increase cancer immunity, a group of mice on a standard diet were given Bacteroides fragilis. These rodents were also better able to withstand tumour growth. However, this was not the case when the mice were fed a vitamin D-deficient diet.

Previous study implies a relationship between vitamin D insufficiency and cancer risk in humans, but no solid findings have yet been published. To investigate this, the study authors ran an analysis on a dataset containing 1.5 million Danish adults, which revealed a relationship between low vitamin D levels and an increased risk of cancer. Another study of a separate cancer patient cohort found that persons with higher vitamin D levels are more likely to respond favourably to immune-based cancer therapies.


While Bacteroides fragilis can be detected in the human microbiome, more research is needed to determine whether vitamin D contributes to immunological resistance to cancer through the same method.
Vitamin D pills and supplement bottle

According to researchers, vitamin D promotes the growth of a certain type of gut bacteria in mice, which improves cancer immunity. (Photo by Niranjan Acharya via Shutterstock)

"What we've shown here surprised us - vitamin D can regulate the gut microbiome to favour a type of bacteria that gives mice better cancer immunity," says Caetano Reis e Sousa, head of the Immunobiology Laboratory at the Crick and senior study author, in a media release.

"This could one day be important for cancer treatment in humans, but we don't know how or why vitamin D affects the microbiome." More research is required before we can definitively state that addressing a vitamin D deficiency has benefits for cancer prevention or treatment."


"Identifying the characteristics that separate a 'good' from a 'poor' microbiome is a significant problem. We discovered that vitamin D aids gut bacteria in eliciting cancer immunity, improving the response to immunotherapy in mice," explains Evangelos Giampazolias, a former postdoctoral researcher at the Crick and now Group Leader of the Cancer Immunosurveillance Group at the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute.


"A critical topic we are currently attempting to answer is how vitamin D promotes a 'healthy' microbiota. If we can answer this question, we may discover novel ways in which the microbiome regulates the immune system, possibly opening up interesting options for cancer prevention and treatment."

"These findings add to the expanding body of evidence about the role of microbiota in cancer immunology and the ability of dietary treatments to fine-tune this link for better patient outcomes. However, more research is needed to fully understand the underlying mechanisms and how they might be used to generate personalised therapy methods," says Romina Goldszmid, Stadtman Investigator at the NCI's Centre For Cancer Research.


"We understand that vitamin D shortage can create health problems; nevertheless, there is insufficient data to link vitamin D levels to cancer risk. This early-stage mouse research, combined with an examination of Danish population data, aims to close the evidence gap. While the findings imply a link between vitamin D and immune responses to cancer, more study is needed to establish this, says Dr. Nisharnthi Duggan, study Information Manager at Cancer Research UK.

"A little sunlight can help our bodies produce vitamin D, but you don't have to sunbathe to accelerate the process. Most people in the UK can obtain adequate vitamin D by spending brief periods of time in the summer sun. We can also obtain vitamin D through our diet and supplements. We know that keeping safe in the sun can lower your risk of cancer, so seek shade, cover up, and use sunscreen when the sun is out."

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