Andi Rustani

Human Microbiome, Colorectal Cancer and Health Disparities: A Review

Authors: A. Rustani¹, R. Singh¹, Q. Yang¹, B. Gerevits¹, C. Wultsch^1,2 and K. Krampis^1,3

¹Bioinformatics and Computational Genomics Laboratory, Department of Biological Sciences, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, NY; ²Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY; ³Institute for Computational Biomedicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY.

The human microbiome is the microbial ecosystem associated with the human body, which greatly impacts human physiology and health. Microbiome profiles are highly complex driven by a multitude of factors including human race and ethnicity. Recent studies have shown that alterations in microbiome composition play an important role in the development of disease such as different types of cancers. Here, we review research on colorectal carcinoma microbiomes studied across different human races and ethnicities. Colorectal cancer is the third most diagnosed cancer in the United States and former research indicated that incidence rates show clear racial/ethnic health disparities. We found that the abundance of the phylum Fusobacteria increases from healthy to tumor colorectal tissues, which was most noticeably in African Americans when compared with Asian and Caucasian colon cancer patients. Hester et al. (2015) examined fecal microbiome samples from Hispanics, African Americans, American Indians, and Caucasians and found significant differences such as an increased abundance of the phylum Firmicutes in African Americans compared to Caucasians. In summary, microbiome profiling across a diverse human population provides a more fundamental understanding of the human microbiome composition and diversity, which ultimately helps to improve the accuracy of early cancer diagnosis. Our review also highlights the need to conduct more extensive race and ethnicity-specific microbiome profiling in cancer patients, which would greatly contribute to the development of race- and ethnicity-specific biomarkers and microbiome-based therapeutic strategies.

Email questions and comments about this abstract to Andi.Rustani58@myhunter.cuny.edu.