Detecting microbial footprints in cancer sequencing

Researchers led by Ghaddar et al. have developed a new computational framework designed to reliably detect microbial organisms within tumor genomic and transcriptomic sequencing data. The presence of microbes in the tumor microenvironment is increasingly recognized as potentially relevant to cancer biology, prognosis, and treatment response, but accurately identifying them amid vast amounts of human sequencing data has posed significant technical challenges. The new framework addresses key issues such as contamination artifacts and false positives that have plagued prior attempts at characterizing the tumor microbiome. Published in Cancer Cell, this work provides the oncology research community with a more robust tool for exploring how intratumoral microbes may influence cancer progression and therapeutic outcomes. The study represents an important methodological advance that could accelerate research into the tumor microbiome as a biomarker or therapeutic target.