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For head and neck tumors, primarily descriptive analyses of the local microbiome are available to date, which do not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the relationship between changes in the microbiota composition and carcinogenesis. In this study, the local microbiota was analyzed in patients with oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma, and the associated immunological tumor microenvironment was also investigated. In 72 patients with oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas, the microbial colonization of the tumor and the healthy opposite side was analyzed using 16s rRNA sequencing. The immunological tumor microenvironment was examined histologically in associated tumor tissue samples. The microbial colonization of the tumor tissue differs significantly from the contralateral healthy side. In addition to an increase in bacterial alpha diversity in the tumor tissue, individual bacterial genera are also significantly more frequently represented, primarily streptococci, fusobacteria, prevotella and porphyromonas. The colonization with streptococci, fusobacteria and prophyromonas showed a significant negative correlation with the density of neutrophil granulocytes in the tumor tissue. Oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas have a microbial signature that differs from healthy tissue and is associated with immunological changes in the immunological microenvironment. A detailed mechanistic ex vivo analysis of the interaction of overexpressed bacterial genera with tumor cells and neutrophil granulocytes is currently underway.
Hussain et al. (Fri,) studied this question.