Breast Cancer & Bacterial Deficiency

According to researchers, the bacterial makeup of breast tissue in women with breast cancer, was found that it has insufficient levels of a certain bacterial genus called Methylobacterium.  Ana Sandoiu explains the findings in her recent article.

The total number of bacteria living in the human body, or the human microbiome, is known to play a key role in the development of many of our diseases.  The bacteria that lives in our gut has been linked to many conditions that range from type 2 diabetes to Parkinson’s disease as well as even multiple sclerosis.  Other studies have also examined the link between the gut microbiota and development of breast cancer and suggests that the microbes in the gut may regulate estrogen levels that will lead to estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer.

Researchers are now breaking new ground by uncovering the bacterial composition in the breast tissue of cancer patients, as there has been less attention to the microbiome residing in the tissue of breast cancer patients.  Hannah Wang is a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute of the Genomic Medicine Institute and first author of the new study, which was published in the journal Oncotarget.

Breast tissue of 78 women were examined by Wang and colleagues.  About 57 of them had undergone a mastectomy as they had invasive breast cancer and 21 were healthy and had undergone cosmetic breast surgery.  The urinary and oral bacteria of the women were also examined by the scientists.  The breast cancer patients had considerably lower levels of a bacterial genus called Methylobacterium.  The results also showed higher levels of gram-positive bacteria in urine, including Staphylococcus, Corynebacterium, Propionibacteriaceae and Actinomyces.  They need more research to understand the role of these bacteria in breast cancer and need a larger cohort of clinically matched patients to be validated.

This is one of the largest studies to examine the microbiome in human breast cancer patients.  The hope is to find a biomarker that would help us diagnose breast cancer quickly and easily.  Dr. Eng, chair of the Cleveland Clinic’s Genomic Medicine Institute in Ohio hopes they can use macrobiotics right before breast cancer forms and then prevent cancer with probiotics or antibiotics.

If specific pro-cancer bacteria can be targeted, they may be able to make the environment less hospitable to cancer and enhance existing treatments.  This is a solid first step in better understanding the significant role of bacterial imbalances in breast cancer even though larger studies are needed.  They are using nanotechnology to target specific bacteria involved in breast cancer.  Future nanotechnology-based treatments could deliver antibiotics straight to the relevant bacteria.

Dr Fredda Branyon