Differential flora in the microenvironment of lung tumor and paired adjacent normal tissues

Abstract Recent evidence demonstrates the existence of diversified microbiota in the lung. However, the effect of lung carcinogenesis on the flora in lung microenvironment has yet not been well investigated. In this study, we surveyed the microbial composition and diversity in lung tumor and paired adjacent normal tissues obtained from 55 lung cancer patients to test whether any specific tumor-associated microbial features in lung microenvironment can be identified. Compared with non-malignant adjacent tissues, the tumor samples showed significantly lower community richness (α diversity), but no significant difference in overall microbiome dissimilarity (β diversity). Strong intrasubject correlations were observed between tumor sample and its paired non-malignant adjacent tissues. In addition, correlation network analysis found more significant taxa–taxa correlations (adjusted q-value < 0.05) in tumor microenvironment than non-malignant adjacent tissues. At taxa level, we found Propionibacterium genus were significantly reduced in tumor tissues compared with non-malignant adjacent tissues. In summary, the microbiota in tumor tissues showed the lower richness, higher taxa–taxa interaction, and reduction of potential pro-inflammatory microbial genera compared with non-malignant tissues, suggesting the potential link between the tumor microbiota and the altered tumor microenvironment for the further investigation.