The gut microbiome as the key to early cancer diagnosis: Czech scientists are participating in the development of a rapid diagnostic test for colorectal cancer

A non-invasive and accurate test for colorectal cancer based on the gut microbiome – this is a vision to which scientists from the IEM CAS have contributed significantly. An international research team led by the University of Trento has shown that the composition of the gut microbiome can serve as a sensitive indicator of this disease. The study’s results were published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine (open in a new window).

The team analysed over 1,600 newly sequenced samples from six countries and used machine learning to develop a predictive model that recognises the presence of colorectal cancer based on specific microbial markers in stool. The Czech Republic plays a key role in this study – almost 40% of the tumour samples originate from Czech research cohorts. The largest share of samples comes from the Czech COLOBIOME cohort, founded by Eva Budinská (RECETOX, Masaryk University) in collaboration with the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute (MOÚ) and with the support of the Czech Health Research Agency. The long-term storage of samples was made possible by the MOÚ Biobank, and the Czech data was subsequently integrated into the international ONCOBIOME project. The second significant Czech contribution is the IIGM-CZ cohort, which the IEM CAS and Charles University coordinate in cooperation with the Italian Institute for Genomic Medicine.

“This is an exceptional example of how international cooperation and data sharing accelerate progress in complex diseases such as colorectal cancer,” says Veronika Vymetálková, head of the Department of Molecular Biology of Cancer of the IEM CAS and one of the co-authors of the successful study.

The study’s results confirmed that the gut microbiome carries specific markers reliably associated with the presence of colorectal cancer. In the future, stool sample analysis could offer a non-invasive and more widely available alternative to colonoscopy. The research represents an important step towards a personalised and more gentle approach to cancer diagnosis.

For more information, please read the official press release of Masaryk University (open in a new window – only available in Czech).