Neoplasia (New York, N.Y.)Oct 18, 2023

Time-limited eating changes daily patterns of gut microbes and their chemicals in mice with lung cancer

Circadian Biology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Apr 4, 2026

Abstract

Time-restricted feeding (TRF) significantly delayed lung tumor growth in mouse models.

TRF altered the composition of the fecal microbiome and metabolome in both tumor-bearing BALB/c nude mice and urethane-induced lung cancer C57BL/6J mice.
Increased abundances of Lactobacillus and Bacillus were observed following TRF, correlating with changes in differential metabolites.
Fecal microbiota transplantation demonstrated that the anti-tumor effects of TRF may result from its regulation of the fecal microbiota.
Pathway analysis indicated that TRF primarily influenced immune and inflammatory processes, which could contribute to its anticancer effects.

Simplified

The homeostasis of the gut microbiota and circadian rhythm is critical to host health, and both are inextricably intertwined with lung cancer. Although time-restricted feeding (TRF) can maintain circadian synchronization and improve metabolic disorders, the effects of TRF on the fecal microbiome, metabolome and their diurnal oscillations in lung cancer have not been discussed. We performed 16S rRNA sequencing and untargeted metabonomic sequencing of the feces prepared from models of tumor-bearing BALB/c nude mice and urethane-induced lung cancer. We demonstrated for the first time that TRF significantly delayed the growth of lung tumors. Moreover, TRF altered the abundances of the fecal microbiome, metabolome and circadian clocks, as well as their rhythmicity, in lung cancer models of tumor-bearing BALB/c nude mice and/or urethane-induced lung cancer C57BL/6J mice. The results of fecal microbiota transplantation proved that the antitumor effects of TRF occur by regulating the fecal microbiota. Notably, Lactobacillus and Bacillus were increased upon TRF and were correlated with most differential metabolites. Pathway enrichment analysis of metabolites revealed that TRF mainly affected immune and inflammatory processes, which might further explain how TRF exerted its anticancer benefits. These findings underscore the possibility that the fecal microbiome/metabolome regulates lung cancer following a TRF paradigm.

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Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

PubMed

Time-limited eating changes daily patterns of gut microbes and their chemicals in mice with lung cancer

Abstract

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Abstract

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