Intra-tumor microbiome-based tumor survival indices predict immune interaction and drug sensitivity on pan-cancer scale.

Journal: mSystems
Published Date: Jun 25, 2025

Abstract

UNLABELLED: Growing research evidence indicates a substantial influence of the intra-tumor microbiome on tumor outcome. However, there is currently no consistent criterion for identifying the association of microbes with tumor progression and response to treatment across various types of cancer. In this study, we concentrate on the intra-tumor microbiome and develop the Tumor Microbiome Survival Index (TMSI), a measure indicative of cancer patient survival risk. Our indices revealed notable distinctions between two stratified risk groups for each of the 10 cancer types and could precisely predict patients' overall survival. For each type of cancer, our findings unveiled two distinct gene expression profiles and shed light on the varying patterns of immune and stromal cell enrichment between the two risk groups. Additionally, we noted that the high-TMSI group exhibited substantially elevated IC50 values for a number of drugs, indicating that individuals in the low-TMSI group might experience superior therapeutic effects from chemotherapy. These findings illuminate the complex dynamics between the tumor microbiome, the patient's immune reaction, and medical outcomes, thus shedding light on microbiome-based personalized therapeutic interventions.

Authors

  • Yan Gao
    Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, The Second People's Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
  • Haohong Zhang
    Key Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics of the Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Molecular-imaging, Center of AI Biology, Department of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, Hubei, China.
  • Dongliang Chu
    Key Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics of the Ministry of Education, Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Molecular-imaging, Center of AI Biology, Department of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
  • Kang Ning
    MOE Key Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics, Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Molecular-imaging, Center of Artificial Intelligence Biology, Department of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China. Electronic address: ningkang@hust.edu.cn.

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