Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Gut Bacteria and Cancer

The latest from the Schloss Lab at U-M

The community of microbes living in the guts of patients with colorectal cancer differs from the microbiome of healthy individuals. Joe Zackular and his colleagues in the Schloss Lab at the University of Michigan show for the first time that these microbial changes are not just correlated with the altered state of their host.

Their results demonstrate that the composition of gut microbes contributes directly to tumorigenesis in mice and suggest that interventions targeting these microbes may be a strategy to prevent the development of colon cancer.

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