Abstract 4885: Changes in abundance of oral microbiota associated with oral cancer

Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA Individual bacteria and shifts in the composition of the microbiome have been associated with human diseases including cancer. To investigate changes in the microbiome associated with oral cancers, we profiled cancers and anatomically matched contralateral normal tissue from the same patient by sequencing 16S rDNA hypervariable region amplicons. In cancer samples from both a discovery and a subsequent confirmation cohort, abundance of Firmicutes (especially Streptococcus) and Actinobacteria (especially Rothia) was significantly decreased relative to contralateral clinically normal samples from the same patient. Significant decreases in abundance of these phyla were observed for pre-cancers, but not when comparing samples from contralateral sites (tongue and floor of mouth) from healthy individuals. Patients with cancer or dysplasia, however, could be distinguished from healthy normal individuals by increased abundance of Prevotella. Weighted UniFrac principal coordinates analysis based on 12 taxa separated most cancers from other samples with greatest separation of node positive cases. Citation Format: Donna G. Albertson, Justin Kuczynski, Aditi Bhattacharya, Bing Huey, Patricia M. Corby, Erica L. S. Queiroz, Kira Nightingale, Alexander R. Kerr, Mark D. DeLacure, Ratna Veeramachaneni, Adam Olshen, Brian L. Schmidt. Changes in abundance of oral microbiota associated with oral cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 4885. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-4885