Another major discovery: fungi can actually enter the body and cause tumors?

Fungal flora are less abundant than bacteria in the human body, but are equally widespread in major tumor types, and some of these fungi can also predict cancer patient treatment and survival.

The findings, reported in this issue of CELL, suggest that fungi could serve as potential cancer biomarkers and therapeutic targets in the clinic and highlight the coexistence of fungi and bacteria in the tumor environment.

Specifically, the findings:

▶In breast cancer patients, higher abundance of Malassezia globosa within tumors was associated with significantly shorter overall survival (OS) (a fungus that is common on human skin but has also recently been shown to promote pancreatic cancer progression).

▶In lung cancer, Aspergillus and Agaricus were more enriched in tumors of smokers compared with never smokers.

▶In ovarian cancer, patients with high abundance of the genus Mycosphaeria in their tumors had significantly shorter progression-free survival (PFS), with the median PFS shortened from 498 days to 135 days.

▶In melanoma patients, although the overall abundance of fungi was not significantly associated with immunotherapy efficacy, Anthozoales was significantly enriched in non-responders.

doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2022.09.005 (2022).