Fungi accelerate pancreatic cancer

Dambuza, Ivy M.; Brown, Gordon D.

doi:10.1038/d41586-019-02892-y

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02 October 2019

Fungi accelerate pancreatic cancer

The impact of fungi on human health is under-studied and underappreciated. One genus of fungus, Malassezia, has now been linked to the progression of pancreatic cancer.

Ivy M. Dambuza ⁰ &
Gordon D. Brown ¹

Ivy M. Dambuza
1. Ivy M. Dambuza is in the Medical Research Council Centre for Medical Mycology, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QD, UK.
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Gordon D. Brown
1. Gordon D. Brown is in the Medical Research Council Centre for Medical Mycology, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QD, UK.
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The communities of microorganisms that occupy specific regions of the body are often altered in cancer¹, and these microbiomes — particularly their bacterial components — are a current focus of cancer research. One example is pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA), for which changes in the bacterial community occupying the pancreas have been documented². This lethal disease often goes undetected until it has reached advanced stages, and the prognosis is usually very poor³. Writing in Nature, Aykut et al.⁴ reveal that the fungal component of the pancreatic microbiome (known as the mycobiome) is also altered in PDA. In fact, an abundance of a specific fungal genus actually promotes the disease.

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Nature 574, 184-185 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02892-y

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