AUTHOR=Trivedi Vaishakhi , Noronha Vanita , Sreekanthreddy Peddagangannagari , Desai Sanket , Poojary Disha , Varghese Linu , Gowda Pooja , Butle Ashwin , Mishra Rohit , Bal Munita , Mittal Neha , Rane Swapnil , Kane Shubhada , Basu Sandip , Patil Vijay , Menon Nandini , Singh Ajay Kumar , Chaturvedi Pankaj , Chandrani Pratik , Choughule Anuradha , Veldore Vidya , Prabhash Kumar , Dutt Amit 

TITLE=Association of Cutibacterium acnes with human thyroid cancer

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Endocrinology

VOLUME=14

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/endocrinology/articles/10.3389/fendo.2023.1152514

DOI=10.3389/fendo.2023.1152514

ISSN=1664-2392

ABSTRACT=<sec><title>Introduction</title><p>The diverse subtypes of thyroid carcinoma have distinct clinical outcomes despite a comparable spectrum of underlying genetic alterations. Beyond genetic alterations, sparse efforts have been made to characterize the microbes associated with thyroid cancer. In this study, we examine the microbial profile of thyroid cancer.</p></sec><sec><title>Methods</title><p>We sequenced the whole transcriptome of 70 thyroid cancers (40 papillary and 30 anaplastic). Using Infectious Pathogen Detector IPD 2.0, we analysed the relative abundance of 1060 microbes across 70 tumours from patients with thyroid cancer against 118 tumour samples from patients with breast, cervical, colorectal, and tongue cancer.</p></sec><sec><title>Results</title><p>Our analysis reveals a significant prevalence of <italic>Cutibacterium acnes</italic> in 58.6% thyroid cancer samples compared to other cancer types (<italic>p=0.00038</italic>). Immune cell fraction analysis between thyroid cancer samples with high and low <italic>Cutibacterium</italic> loads identify enrichment of immunosuppressive cells, including Tregs (<italic>p=0.015</italic>), and other anti-inflammatory cytokines in the tumour microenvironment, suggesting an immune evasion/immunosuppression <italic>milieu</italic> is associated with the infection. A higher burden of <italic>Cutibacterium acnes</italic> was also found to be associated with poor survival defining a distinct sub-group of thyroid cancer.</p></sec><sec><title>Conclusion</title><p><italic>Cutibacterium acnes</italic> is associated with immune suppression and poor prognosis in a subpopulation of thyroid cancer. This study may help design novel therapeutic measures involving appropriate antibiotics to manage the disease better.</p></sec>