95% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Microbial Immunology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1576679
Advances in Human Microbiome and Prostate Cancer Research
Provisionally accepted- 1 Department of Urology, China-Japan Union Hospital, Jilin University, Changchun, China
- 2 Department of Endocrine, China-Japan Union Hospital, Jilin University, Changchun, China
Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most common malignant tumor in men worldwide, and its metastatic and heterogeneous nature makes it significantly more difficult to treat. Recent studies have revealed the critical role of microbiota in prostate cancer occurrence, progression and treatment. Accumulating evidence from 16S rRNA and metagenomic sequencing suggests the presence of specific microbiota in prostate tissues and macrogenomics techniques: cancerous tissues are enriched with proinflammatory genera (e.g., Fusobacterium, Propionibacterium acnes), whereas commensal bacteria (e.g., Pseudomonas) are more common in paracancerous tissues.The microbiota drive tumor progression through activation of the NF-κB/STAT3 pathway to induce chronic inflammation, modulation of the immune microenvironment (e.g., Treg/Th17 imbalance and M2-type macrophage polarization), and metabolite (e.g., LPS, short-chain fatty acids) mediated hormonal and epigenetic regulation. In terms of clinical translation, urinary microbiota characterization combined with metabolomics analysis may enhance diagnostic specificity, while gut flora modulation (e.g., probiotic interventions or fecal transplants) may improve resistance to androgen deprivation therapy. Current challenges include sequencing accuracy of low-biomass samples, limitations of causal mechanism validation models, and large cohort heterogeneity. In the future, it will be necessary to integrate multi-omics technologies to explore the bidirectional regulation of the "gut-prostate axis" and develop personalized therapeutic strategies targeting microorganisms. In this paper, we systematically review the interactions between microbiota and prostate cancer and their clinical potentials to provide a theoretical basis for precision diagnosis and treatment.
Keywords: prostate cancer, urinary microbiome, gut-prostate axis, tumor microenvironment；microbiome, microbiome
Received: 14 Feb 2025; Accepted: 26 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pei, Liu and Han. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Lei Liu, Department of Endocrine, China-Japan Union Hospital, Jilin University, Changchun, China
Yuping Han, Department of Urology, China-Japan Union Hospital, Jilin University, Changchun, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.