An increasing body of literature suggests that there is a crucial role for the microbiota in colorectal cancer (CRC) pathogenesis. Important drivers within this context have ranged from individual microbes to the whole community. Our study expands on a recent meta-analysis investigating microbial biomarkers for CRC by testing the hypothesis that the bacterial community has important associations to both early (adenoma) and late (carcinoma) stage disease. To test this hypothesis we examined both feces (n = 1737) and tissue (492 total samples from 350 individuals) across 14 different studies.
Sponsored by the Host Microbiome Initiative