Abstract
The human intestine retains a complex microbial ecosystem, which performs crucial functions that impact on host health. Several studies have indicated that intestinal dysbiosis may impact on the establishment of life-threatening intestinal diseases such as colorectal cancer. An adenomatous polyp is the result of abnormal tissue growth, which is benign but is considered to be associated with a high risk of developing colorectal cancer, based on its grade of dysplasia. Development of diagnostic tools that are based on surveying the gut microbiota and are aimed at early detection of colorectal cancer represent highly desirable target. For this purpose, we performed a pilot study in which we applied a metataxonomic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing approach to unveil the composition of microbial communities of intestinal polyps. Moreover, we performed a meta-analysis involving the reconstructed microbiota composition of adenomatous polyps and publicly available metagenomics datasets of colorectal cancer. These analyses allowed the identification of microbial taxa such as Faecalibacterium, Bacteroides and Romboutsia, which appear to be depleted in cancerogenic mucosa as well as in adenomatous polyps, thus representing novel microbial biomarkers associated with early tumor formation. Furthermore, an absolute quantification of Fusubacterium nucleatum in polyps further compounded the important role of this microorganism as a valuable putative microbial biomarker for early diagnosis of colorectal cancer.
Highlights
Adenomatous polyps or adenomas have long been recognized as precursors of colorectal cancer[1,2]
All adenomatous polyps were found in males, while the remaining hyperplastic polyps were collected from three males and five females
In order to further identify differences in microbiota composition between Colonic Mucosa with Polyp (CMP) and Healthy Marginal Tissue (HMT) patients, we focused on 30 taxa, which were shown to be present as the absolute change of >±0.1% or that displayed a significant variation in terms of relative abundance (p-value < 0.05)
Summary
Adenomatous polyps or adenomas have long been recognized as precursors of colorectal cancer[1,2]. In order to evaluate the role of the indigenous gut microbiota of subjects undergoing colic mucosectomies of polypoid lesions, we performed a pilot study collecting gut biopsies from healthy mucosa and polyps from the same subjects On these samples, we performed a meta-analysis involving the here reconstructed microbiota composition of adenomatous polyps and publicly available metagenomic datasets of colorectal cancer based on 16S rRNA microbial profiling data[31,32,33] in order to search for the occurrence of common microorganisms between polyps and colon cancer. These analyses revealed potential novel microbial biomarkers associated with early malignant transformation
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