Oncobiome at the Forefront of a Novel Molecular Mechanism to Understand the Microbiome and Cancer

Adv Exp Med Biol. 2019:1168:147-156. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-24100-1_10.

Abstract

The microbiome comprises all the genetic material within a microbiota, that represents tenfold higher than that of our cells. The microbiota it includes a wide variety of microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, protozoans, fungi, and archaea, and this ecosystem is personalized in any body space of every individual. Balanced microbial communities can positively contribute to training the immune system and maintaining immune homeostasis. Dysbiosis is a change in the normal microbiome composition that can initiate chronic inflammation, epithelial barrier breaches, and overgrowth of harmful bacteria. The next-generation sequencing methods have revolutionized the study of the microbiome. Bioinformatic tools to manage large volumes of new information, it became possible to assess species diversity and measure dynamic fluctuations in microbial communities. The burden of infections that are associated to human cancer is increasing but is underappreciated by the cancer research community. The rich content in microbes of normal and tumoral tissue reflect could be defining diverse physiological or pathological states. Genomic research has emerged a new focus on the interplay between the human microbiome and carcinogenesis and has been termed the 'oncobiome'. The interactions among the microbiota in all epithelium, induce changes in the host immune interactions and can be a cause of cancer. Microbes have been shown to have systemic effects on the host that influence the efficacy of anticancer drugs. Metagenomics allows to investigate the composition of microbial community. Metatranscriptome analysis applies RNA sequencing to microbial samples to determine which species are present. Cancer can be caused by changes in the microbiome. The roles of individual microbial species in cancer progression have been identified long ago for various tissue types. The identification of microbiomes of drug resistance in the treatment of cancer patients has been the subject of numerous microbiome studies. The complexity of cancer genetic alterations becomes irrelevant in certain cancers to explain the origin, the cause or the oncogenic maintenance by the oncogene addiction theory.

Keywords: Cancer; Dysbiosis; Metagenomics; Metatranscriptomics; Microbiome; NGS; Oncobiome.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Bacteria / genetics
  • Dysbiosis
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
  • Humans
  • Metagenomics
  • Microbiota* / genetics
  • Microbiota* / physiology
  • Neoplasms* / microbiology