ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiomes
Sec. Host and Microbe Associations
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frmbi.2025.1589686
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Respiratory System Microbiome: Diversity, Function and HealthView all 5 articles
Microbial Hallmarks of the Respiratory Tract in Lung Cancer: A Meta-Analysis
Provisionally accepted
Bin Zhu
Stephanie McHale
Michelle Van ScoykGregory RiddickPei-Ying WuChu-Fang ChouChing-Yi Chen
Robert Winn*- Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, United States
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Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths and has been associated with the microbiota of the human respiratory tract. However, the optimal sample type for studying the role of microbiota in lung cancer and the microbial hallmarks of lung cancer patients remain unclear. In this study, we downloaded 16S rRNA sequencing data of 1,105 high-quality samples from 13 BioProjects, including lung tissues, bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluids, and saliva, and performed a meta-analysis. Our results revealed that the BAL microbiota, dominated by taxa such as Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas, which are not typically abundant in the oral microbiota, served as hallmarks of individuals without lung cancer. In contrast, BAL samples from lung cancer patients showed higher relative abundances of oral-associated taxa, e.g., Streptococcus and Prevotella, with increased rates of dominance by these taxa in the BAL microbiota of lung cancer patients. Additionally, beta diversity analysis revealed significant compositional differences between the BAL microbiota of healthy individuals and those with lung cancer. Furthermore, while compositional differences were observed in the oral microbiota between healthy participants and lung cancer patients, as well as between microbiota from lung tumors and normal adjacent tissues, these differences were less pronounced than those observed in the BAL samples between healthy individuals and lung cancer patients. Cross-site correlations indicated limited associations between the relative abundances of taxa in the oral, BAL, and lung tissue microbiota, implying that differences in lower respiratory microbiota may not be directly driven by upper respiratory tract microbiota. These findings highlight distinct microbial patterns linked to lung cancer in the respiratory tract. More pronounced differences were observed in the BAL microbiota between healthy individuals and lung cancer patients, with the predominance of taxa, typically not abundant in the oral microbiota, serving as hallmarks of health.
Keywords: lung cancer, Lung microbiota, microbiome, Bronchoalveolar Lavage, Oral microbiota
Received: 13 Mar 2025; Accepted: 10 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, McHale, Scoyk, Riddick, Wu, Chou, Chen and Winn. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Robert Winn, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, United States
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