Fig. 1.

Local treatment of B16F10 melanoma tumors with CFUS reduced tumor burden and altered the gut microbiome in mice. A) Schematic of study design, B) Aged control mice showed faster tumor growth rates than young mice. When treated with CFUS, both young and aged mice exhibited a reduction in tumor volume, with young mice showing a near complete remission than old mice at treated and contralateral untreated (abscopal) locations. C) The alpha diversity of the gut microbiome was assessed using the Simpson index via 16S sequencing of fecal samples collected from young and aged CFUS treated and control groups and plotted as inverse Simpson diversity, D) 3-dimensional principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) plot created using the matrix of paired-wise distance between aged and young samples calculated by the Bray-Curtis dissimilarity using unique amplicon sequence variants (ASV). Statistical analysis was done using one-way ANOVA with Fisher’s LSD test, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.005, ***p < 0.0005.