{"id":1011,"date":"2019-07-11T13:00:12","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T17:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/bims\/?p=1011"},"modified":"2026-05-01T13:04:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T17:04:21","slug":"unhealthy-gut-promotes-spread-of-breast-cancer-uva-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/bims\/unhealthy-gut-promotes-spread-of-breast-cancer-uva-study-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Unhealthy Gut Promotes Spread of Breast Cancer, UVA Study Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-544\" src=\"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/bims\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/390\/2019\/07\/Rutkowski_smsq.jpg\" alt=\"Melanie Rutkowski\" width=\"300\" height=\"240\" \/>Melanie Rutkowski, PhD<\/strong>, of UVA\u2019s Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology, found that disrupting the microbiome of mice caused hormone receptor-positive breast cancer to become more aggressive. Altering the microbiome, the collection of microorganisms that live in the gut and elsewhere, had dramatic effects in the body, priming the cancer to spread.<\/p>\n<p>This new research suggests that an unhealthy, inflamed gut causes breast cancer to become much more invasive and spread more quickly to other parts of the body.<\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"https:\/\/uvaconnect.com\/unhealthy-gut-promotes-spread-of-breast-cancer-uva-study-finds\/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Connect%20June%2011%202019%20(1)&amp;utm_content=\">Read more<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Melanie Rutkowski, PhD, of UVA\u2019s Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology, found that disrupting the microbiome of mice caused hormone receptor-positive breast cancer to become more aggressive. Altering the microbiome, the collection of microorganisms that live in the gut and elsewhere, had dramatic effects in the body, priming the cancer to spread. This new [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-1011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-highlights","tag-delete"],"acf":false,"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Unhealthy Gut Promotes Spread of Breast Cancer, UVA Study Finds - Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/bims\/unhealthy-gut-promotes-spread-of-breast-cancer-uva-study-finds\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unhealthy Gut Promotes Spread of Breast Cancer, UVA Study Finds - Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Melanie Rutkowski, PhD, of UVA\u2019s Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology, found that disrupting the microbiome of mice caused hormone receptor-positive breast cancer to become more aggressive. Altering the microbiome, the collection of microorganisms that live in the gut and elsewhere, had dramatic effects in the body, priming the cancer to spread. 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