Trends in Current Clinical Research on Herbal Medicines and Gut Microbiota

Gut microbiota, regarded as the second genome of the human body, has become a key modulator of cancer treatment. It is an emerging topic in precision medicine, and many studies have reported that the variability in most diseases and individuals is related to gut microbiota characteristics. Numerous clinical studies on cancer treatment have demonstrated a correlation between therapeutic responses to immunotherapeutic cancer drugs and gut immunity or the microbiome. In this paper, we present the current clinical research on herbal medicines and gut microbiota and explore the possibility of integrative cancer treatment with herbal medicines and immunotherapeutic cancer drugs. We identified six clinical trials enrolled in the Clinical Research Information Service and five clinical studies on gut microbiota and herbal medicines in MEDLINE via PubMed. Generally, clinical studies have used 16S rRNA sequencing to analyze the gut microbiota. Study findings have suggested that the gut microbiota can be used as a biomarker to predict the pharmacological effects of herbal medicines. Gut microbiota modifications by herbal medicines may inhibit tumor progression. Herbal medicines are metabolized to active substances through interactions with the microbiome and control the dysbiosis of the gut microbiome. Further research on the possibility of individualized precision medicine by analyzing the gut microbiota after administering herbal medicine is needed.