Microbiomes of Urine and the Prostate Are Linked to Human Prostate Cancer Risk Groups

 

New paper published today titled "Microbiomes of Urine and the Prostate Are Linked to Human Prostate Cancer Risk Groups" in European Urology Oncology. 

Papers are coming like buses this week. Delighted that after nine years of work our paper looking at the link between bacteria and aggressive prostate cancer is out. This is exciting stuff.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euo.2022.03.006

We already know of some strong associations between infections and cancer. For example, the presence of Helicobacter pylori bacteria in the digestive tract can lead to stomach ulcers and is associated with stomach cancer, and some types of the HPV virus can cause cervical cancer. We wanted to find out whether bacteria could be linked to the way prostate cancer grows and spreads.

We analysed urine or tissue samples from more than 600 patients with or without prostate cancer. And we developed methods of finding the bacteria associated with aggressive prostate cancer. We found several types of bacteria associated with aggressive prostate cancer, some of which are new types of bacteria never found before. The set of bacteria found include Anaerococcus, Peptoniphilus, Porphyromonas, Fenollaria and Fusobacterium. All of these are anaerobic, which means they like to grow without oxygen present.



When any of these specific anaerobic bacteria were detected in the patient’s samples, it was linked to the presence of higher grades of prostate cancer and more rapid progression to aggressive disease. We also identified potential biological mechanisms of how these bacteria may be linked to cancer. Among the things we don’t yet know is how people pick up these bacteria, whether they are causing the cancer, or whether a poor immune response permits the growth of the bacteria. But we hope that our findings and future work could lead to new treatment options, that could slow or prevent aggressive prostate cancer from developing. Our work could also lay the foundations for new tests that use bacteria to predict the most effective treatment for each man’s cancer.


Amazing collaboration between Norwich Medical School UEA, Quadram Institute, the NNUH and others. It was funded by the by Prostate Cancer UK and The Bob Champion Cancer Trust.

Press Coverage:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A census of amplified and overexpressed human cancer genes : Nature Reviews Cancer

This paper , that I am an author on, was released on 24th December 2009: "Integrated genome-wide screens of DNA copy number and gene expression in human cancers have accelerated the rate of discovery of amplified and overexpressed genes. However, the biological importance of most of the genes identified in such studies remains unclear. In this Analysis, we propose a weight-of-evidence based classification system for identifying individual genes in amplified regions that are selected for during tumour development. In a census of the published literature we have identified 77 genes for which there is good evidence of involvement in the development of human cancer." I spent a huge amount of time on this one but I am still pretty low on the author pecking order. This is for a super high impact journal, "Nature Reviews Cancer" which has a 2008 ISI Impact Factor of 30.762. Also check out the associated website which I put together just before Christmas. Hopefully, this
Read more

RT @jburnmurdoch: Most useful thread I’ve read on the dynamics of Covid transmission. By an expert, and packed full of links to evidence. Indoor spaces and or prolonged face-to-face contact account for large majority of Covid transmission. Walking past someone in street/park much lower risk. https://t.co/fnMrDjAxfq

Most useful thread I’ve read on the dynamics of Covid transmission. By an expert, and packed full of links to evidence. Indoor spaces and or prolonged face-to-face contact account for large majority of Covid transmission. Walking past someone in street/park much lower risk. https://t.co/fnMrDjAxfq — John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) May 17, 2020 from Twitter https://twitter.com/danbrewer
Read more

GMail now with IMAP

GMail shakes IMAP out of coma | The Register Google has announced that gmail will now support IMAP. This means that gmail can be used in a normal email client such as Thunderbird rather than just on the web and the changes you make using that client will be reflected on the web version. I have been waiting for this one for a long time and I am very pleased with this news. I have managed to set it up without a problem, well apart from my work firewall blocking port 993 out for some version.
Read more