Micheliolide ameliorates colon cancer cachexia by modulating gut microbiota-immune signaling via Phocaeicola vulgatus enrichment.

Abstract

Background: Cancer cachexia profoundly impacts patient survival and quality of life. Current treatments fail to halt this trajectory, highlighting an urgent clinical need for host-directed therapies capable of uncoupling skeletal muscle wasting from tumor progression. This study investigated the therapeutic potential of micheliolide (MCL) across distinct tumor contexts.

Methods: We employed immunocompetent murine models of colon cancer (CT26) and lung cancer (LLC) cachexia, pseudo-germ-free (pseudo-GF) mice, murine C2C12 myotubes, and primary human skeletal muscle cells. We evaluated MCL's impact on muscle wasting, systemic inflammation (splenic CD4⁺ T cell phenotypes), gut microbiota composition, and short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) production. The direct effects of Phocaeicola vulgatus (P. vulgatus) administration were also assessed in the CT26 model.

Results: MCL functions as a potent host-directed therapy, ameliorating muscle wasting in both models-particularly CT26-completely uncoupling muscle preservation from tumor cytotoxicity. In vitro, MCL directly prevented catabolism in both C2C12 and human primary myotubes. In vivo, MCL robustly rescued muscle mass and function. This was associated with the suppression of local muscle NF-κB hyperactivation and a marked reduction in the absolute counts of activated (CD25⁺) and exhaustion marker-expressing (PD-1⁺, TIM-3⁺) splenic CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T cells, resolving splenomegaly. Crucially, targeted microbiota depletion in pseudo-GF mice entirely abrogated these anti-cachectic benefits, establishing the gut microbiome as an indispensable mediator. MCL selectively enriched the beneficial bacterium P. vulgatus while differentially suppressing potential pathobionts like Enterococcus faecalis in CT26 and Streptococcus acidominimus in LLC. Microbial functional analysis indicated MCL increased the predicted potential for biotin biosynthesis in the CT26 model. Correlation analyses linked P. vulgatus abundance and increased SCFAs to reduced cachexia severity and modulated T cell profiles. Validating its functional significance, oral P. vulgatus administration significantly attenuated muscle wasting, increased cecal butyrate, and beneficially altered specific gut bacterial taxa in the CT26 model.

Conclusion: By therapeutically rewiring the gut-immune-muscle axis, MCL exerts pronounced and context-dependent anti-cachectic efficacy. Through dampening of systemic inflammation via T cell modulation, beneficial remodeling of the gut microbiota, and enhancement of predicted microbial biosynthesis pathways, MCL serves as a highly translational, host-directed intervention to mitigate cancer-induced systemic catabolism independent of tumor growth inhibition. Video Abstract.