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©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Gut mucosal microbiota profiles linked to colorectal cancer recurrence
Rui-Xue Huo, Yi-Jia Wang, Shao-Bin Hou, Wei Wang, Chun-Ze Zhang, Xue-Hua Wan
Rui-Xue Huo, Department of Oncology, Tianjin Union Medical Center, Nankai University, Tianjin 300121, China
Yi-Jia Wang, Laboratory of Oncologic Molecular Medicine, Tianjin Union Medical Center, Nankai University, Tianjin 300121, China
Shao-Bin Hou, Advanced Studies in Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, United States
Wei Wang, Xue-Hua Wan, TEDA Institute of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Nankai University, Tianjin 300457, China
Chun-Ze Zhang, Department of Colorectal Surgery, Tianjin Union Medical Center, Nankai University, Tianjin 300121, China
Chun-Ze Zhang, Tianjin Institute of Coloproctology, Tianjin 300121, China
Author contributions: Wan XH contributed to the conception of the study; Huo RX and Wang YJ contributed significantly to follow-up, analysis and manuscript preparation; Huo RX, Hou SB and Wan XH performed the data analyses and wrote the manuscript; Wang W and Zhang CZ helped perform the analysis with constructive discussions; Zhang CZ collected the samples; All authors have read and approve the final manuscript.
Supported by Tianjin Science and Technology Plan Project, No. 19YFZCSY00170; Tianjin Union Medical Center, No. 2019YJ007; Beijing Medical and Health Foundation, No. F1814B; Key R&D Projects in the Tianjin Science and Technology Pillar Program, No. 19YFZCSY00420; National Key R&D Program of China, No. 2017YFC1700606 and 2017YFC1700604.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Tianjin Union Medical Center Institutional Review Board (Approval No. B31).
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at xuehua.wan@nankai.edu.cn.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See:
https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Corresponding author: Xue-Hua Wan, PhD, Assistant Professor, Senior Researcher, TEDA Institute of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Nankai University, No. 23 Hongda Street, Tianjin 300457, China. xuehua.wan@nankai.edu.cn
Received: December 7, 2021
Peer-review started: December 7, 2021
First decision: January 27, 2022
Revised: February 1, 2022
Accepted: March 25, 2022
Article in press: March 25, 2022
Published online: May 14, 2022
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common malignant tumors. Gut mucosal microbiota is considered to be one of the key factors promoting CRC. There is evidence that certain gut bacteria are linked to the prognosis (recurrence, overall survival and disease-free survival) of CRC, but there is a lack of research on the relationship between large-scale intestinal microbiota profiles and CRC recurrence/patient prognosis.
Research motivation
Our study focused on the relationship between the abundance of intestinal microbiota at different positions and CRC recurrence/patient prognosis. This study provides novel potential biomarkers for patient prognosis in the future.
Research objectives
The main objective of this study was to evaluate whether the abundance of intestinal microbiota at on-tumor or adjacent-tumor sites can predict CRC recurrence and patient prognosis. Our study has preliminarily suggested that some gut bacteria may have predictive values for CRC recurrence and patient prognosis. These results can provide new biomarkers for prediction of CRC recurrence in the future.
Research methods
We collected intestinal bacteria from different locations of the intestinal mucosa of patients and healthy controls. The bacterial taxa and abundance were determined by high-throughput 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing. The relationship between gut mucosal microbiota profiles and CRC recurrence and patient prognosis was explored by bioinformatics analysis, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox regression analysis. These methods have been well established in the field.
Research results
Through analysis, gut mucosal microbiota profiles are associated with CRC recurrence and patient prognosis. Abundance of some bacterial genera/families, e.g., Anaerotruncus, Bacteroidales and Fusobacterium, may have prognostic value for CRC recurrence and patient prognosis. The mechanism studies exploring the roles of gut mucosal microbiota in CRC recurrence and patient prognosis need to be carried out in the future.
Research conclusions
This study provides new potential biomarkers identified from gut mucosal microbiota for CRC recurrence and patient prognosis.
Research perspectives
In the future, it is necessary to explore the mechanism of how gut mucosal bacteria affect CRC recurrence and patient prognosis.
