From our collaborators at Johns Hopkins Medicine International | New Clues to Colon Cancer Lie in Biofilm
“The bacteria are causing inflammation, and that inflammation can lead to cancer.”
It’s fairly common knowledge that a long-term diet of high-fat red meat and a sedentary lifestyle can be a dependable recipe for colon cancer.
But why? What is it about red meat or a high-fat diet that promotes cancer in the colon? And why is a lack of exercise such a risk?
Johns Hopkins researchers Cynthia Sears and Francis Giardiello are taking a look at the microbiome—the colony of trillions of bacteria that live in the human gut—for answers.
“The bacteria in the colon may be influenced by what you eat,” Giardiello says, “and that can give you certain populations of bacteria that then predispose you to colon cancer.”
So Sears, professor of medicine, oncology and molecular microbiology and immunology, and Giardiello, professor of medicine and former director of the Johns Hopkins Division of Gastroenterology, teamed up to focus on the coating of bacteria that sometimes sticks to the walls of the colon—biofilm—rather than looking at the bacteria that move through the colon. Does the sticky coating of bacteria that clings to the walls of our intestines play a role in cancer?
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