Characteristics of cancer microbiome in Korean patients with gastrointestinal tract cancer

Abstract

There has been remarkable progress in identifying microbiome that affect the human body in a wide variety of ways over the past two decades. As high throughput sequencing, such as 16s rRNA sequencing and RNA sequencing have advanced, cancer microbiome research has also flourished. We performed microbiome analysis of Korean gastrointestinal (GI) tract cancer patients. Fusobacterium nucleatum (F. nucleatum) was common enriched bacteria in all types of cancer tissues. Generally, F. nucleatum is a gram-negative obligate anaerobe bacterium known for its role in promoting colorectal cancer. Through GSEA and DEGs analysis, we identified G2M checkpoint pathway upregulated in F. nucleatum high group. Also, we tested effect of F.nucleatum supernatants to G2M checkpoint pathway genes and cell viability with MC 38 cell lines. F. nucleatum supernatants up-regulated the expression of G2M checkpoint pathway genes and cell proliferation of MC 38 cells. Altogether, F. nucleatum seemed to facilitate cancer to use G2M checkpoint pathways, and we propose F. nucleatum as a therapeutic target in Korean GI tract cancer.