Unveiling microbiome profiles in human inner body fluids and tumor tissues with pancreatic or biliary tract cancer.

ABSTRACT

With the discovery of bacterial symbiosis in the tissues of various cancers, the study of the tumor microbiome is attracting a great deal of attention. Anatomically, since the gastrointestinal tract, liver, and pancreas form a continuous ductal structure, the microbiomes in the digestive juices of these organs may influence each other. Here, we report a series of microbiome data in tumor-associated tissues such as tumor, non-tumor, and lymph nodes, and body fluids such as saliva, gastric juice, pancreatic juice, bile, and feces of patients with pancreatic or biliary tract cancers. The results show that the microbiome of tumor-associated tissues has a very similar bacterial composition, but that in body fluids has different bacterial composition which varies by location, where some bacteria localize to specific body fluids. Surprisingly, Akkermansia was only detected in the bile of patients with biliary tract cancer and its presence was significantly associated with the performance of external biliary drainage (P = 0.041). Furthermore, we found that tumor-associated tissues and body fluids in deep inner body are mostly inhabited by unidentified and uncharacterized bacteria, suggesting that such bacteria may be potential targets for precision therapy in the future.