Microbial and Metabolic Gut Profiling across Seven Malignancies Identifies Fecal Faecalibacillus intestinalis and Formic Acid as Commonly Altered in Cancer Patients

• Published in: International journal of molecular sciences Vol. 25; no. 15; p. 8026
• Main Authors: Kulecka, Maria, Czarnowski, Paweł, Bałabas, Aneta, Turkot, Maryla, Kruczkowska-Tarantowicz, Kamila, Żeber-Lubecka, Natalia, Dąbrowska, Michalina, Paszkiewicz-Kozik, Ewa, Walewski, Jan, Ługowska, Iwona, Koseła-Paterczyk, Hanna, Rutkowski, Piotr, Kluska, Anna, Piątkowska, Magdalena, Jagiełło-Gruszfeld, Agnieszka, Tenderenda, Michał, Gawiński, Cieszymierz, Wyrwicz, Lucjan, Borucka, Magdalena, Krzakowski, Maciej, Zając, Leszek, Kamiński, Michał, Mikula, Michał, Ostrowski, Jerzy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 01.08.2024
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Amino acids; Bacteria; Breast cancer; Cancer patients; Care and treatment; Dysbiosis - microbiology; E coli; Faecalibacillus intestinalis; Feces; Feces - microbiology; Female; Formates - metabolism; Formic acid; Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry; Gastric cancer; Gastrointestinal Microbiome; Humans; Hypothesis testing; Irritable bowel syndrome; Male; Medical research; Medicine, Experimental; Melanoma; Metabolism; Metabolites; Metabolome; metabolomics; Metabolomics - methods; Metagenomics - methods; Microbiota; Microbiota (Symbiotic organisms); Middle Aged; Neoplasms - metabolism; Neoplasms - microbiology; Saturated fatty acids; Scientific imaging; shotgun metagenomics; Stomach; Taxonomy; Tumors; Poland; shotgun metagenomics; Faecalibacillus intestinalis; metabolomics; cancer patients
• ISSN: 1422-0067; 1661-6596; 1422-0067
• DOI: 10.3390/ijms25158026

The key association between gut dysbiosis and cancer is already known. Here, we used whole-genome shotgun sequencing (WGS) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) to conduct metagenomic and metabolomic analyses to identify common and distinct taxonomic configurations among 40, 45, 71, 34, 50, 60, and 40 patients with colorectal cancer, stomach cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, melanoma, lymphoid neoplasms and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), respectively, and compared the data with those from sex- and age-matched healthy controls (HC). α-diversity differed only between the lymphoid neoplasm and AML groups and their respective HC, while β-diversity differed between all groups and their HC. Of 203 unique species, 179 and 24 were under- and over-represented, respectively, in the case groups compared with HC. Of these, was under-represented in each of the seven groups studied, was under-represented in all but the stomach cancer group, and 22 species were under-represented in the remaining five case groups. There was a marked reduction in the gut microbiome cancer index in all case groups except the AML group. Of the short-chain fatty acids and amino acids tested, the relative concentration of formic acid was significantly higher in each of the case groups than in HC, and the abundance of seven species of correlated negatively with most amino acids and formic acid, and positively with the levels of acetic, propanoic, and butanoic acid. We found more differences than similarities between the studied malignancy groups, with large variations in diversity, taxonomic/metabolomic profiles, and functional assignments. While the results obtained may demonstrate trends rather than objective differences that correlate with different types of malignancy, the newly developed gut microbiota cancer index did distinguish most of the cancer cases from HC. We believe that these data are a promising step forward in the search for new diagnostic and predictive tests to assess intestinal dysbiosis among cancer patients.