Providing adequate nutrition support is incredibly challenging for blood cancer patients, especially those undergoing intensive therapies. Treatment-related toxicities—such as severe mucositis (painful mouth ulcers), constant nausea, and impaired oral intake—frequently prevent patients from eating normally. We know that nutrition and the gut microbiome (the community of microbes living in the digestive tract) deeply impact immune function, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and how well a patient responds to cancer treatments.

Historically, patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (alloHSCT, or bone marrow transplants) were given intravenous nutrition (Parenteral Nutrition, or PN). However, this method can cause severe metabolic issues, requires dedicated central line access, increases sepsis risk, and severely disrupts the gut microbiome. While feeding via a nasogastric tube (Enteral Nutrition, or EN) may be a safer, more cost-effective alternative, high-quality clinical evidence is still lacking.

The nutrition and microbiome stream aims to investigate the optimal method of nutrition support during alloHSCT and whether nutrition interventions to modify the microbiome improve patient outcomes. The stream will also investigate consumer perspectives to nutrition support and develop core outcomes for future nutrition trials.