Vicente-Valor Juan, Tesolato Sofía, Gómez-Garre Dulcenombre, Paz-Cabezas Mateo, Ortega-Hernández Adriana, Fernández-Hernández Constanza, de la Serna Sofía, Domínguez-Serrano Inmaculada, Dziakova Jana, Rivera Daniel, Rupérez Francisco-Javier, García Antonia, Torres Antonio, Iniesta Pilar
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain.
San Carlos Health Research Institute (IdISSC), San Carlos Hospital, Madrid, Spain.
Front Immunol. 2025 Jul 18;16:1562416. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1562416. eCollection 2025.
There is increasing evidence demonstrating the relationship between microbiota and colorectal cancer. Several studies have been published analyzing microbiota in tissues and feces from cancer patients; however, there are only a few publications investigating the clinical utility of serum microbiome from colorectal cancer patients. Our aim was to advance in the search for serum biomarkers for the diagnosis of colorectal cancer.
We conducted a cross-sectional study assessing bacterial DNA and metabolomic profiles in 64 serum samples from subjects affected by colorectal cancer and controls. A metagenomic analysis of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene in serum was established, and serum metabolites were detected through an untargeted metabolic study based on Gas Chromatography-Quadruple Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometry with accurate mass.
After integrating the data resulting from the bioinformatics and statistical analyses, we obtained different profiles in colorectal cancer population and controls, regardless of the subjects' age, gender and body mass index. Serum levels of Firmicutes and threonic acid were the most relevant characteristics that could help differentiate both groups, achieving an excellent predictive accuracy in this discovery cohort (area under the ROC curve = 0.95). Although these results should be validated in other cohorts through multicenter studies, we consider that our data could be relevant and applicable to the early diagnosis of colorectal cancer.
越来越多的证据表明微生物群与结直肠癌之间存在关联。已经发表了几项分析癌症患者组织和粪便中微生物群的研究；然而，仅有少数出版物研究了结直肠癌患者血清微生物组的临床应用价值。我们的目的是在寻找结直肠癌诊断血清生物标志物方面取得进展。
我们进行了一项横断面研究，评估了64例结直肠癌患者和对照者血清样本中的细菌DNA和代谢组学特征。建立了血清中细菌16S rRNA基因的宏基因组分析，并通过基于气相色谱-四极杆飞行时间质谱且具有精确质量数的非靶向代谢研究来检测血清代谢物。
在整合生物信息学和统计分析得出的数据后，无论受试者的年龄、性别和体重指数如何，我们在结直肠癌人群和对照者中获得了不同的特征。厚壁菌门的血清水平和苏糖酸是最有助于区分两组的相关特征，在这个发现队列中实现了优异的预测准确性（ROC曲线下面积 = 0.95）。尽管这些结果应通过多中心研究在其他队列中进行验证，但我们认为我们的数据可能与结直肠癌的早期诊断相关且适用。
