Fecal microbiota strongly correlates with tissue microbiota composition in Colorectal Cancer but not in Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

Microbiota could be of interest in the diagnosis of Colorectal and Non-small Cell Lung Cancer (CRC and NSCLC). However, how the microbial components of tissues and feces reflect each other remains unknown. In this work, our main objective is to know the degree of correlation between the composition of the tissue microbiota and that of the feces of patients affected by CRC and NSCLC. Specifically, we investigated tumor and non-tumor tissues from 38 recruited patients with CRC and 19 with NSCLC. DNA from samples was submitted for 16S rDNA metagenomic se-quencing, followed by data analysis through the QIIME2 pipeline and further statistical processing with STATA IC16. Tumor and non-tumor tissue selected genera were highly correlated in both CRC and NSCLC (100% and 81.25%). Following, we established tissue-feces correlations, using selected genera from a LEfSe analysis previously published. In CRC, we found a strong correlation between the taxa detected in feces and those from colorectal tissues. However, our data do not demonstrate this correlation in NSCLC. In conclusion, our data demonstrate that the microbiota of tumor and non-tumor tissues is similar, with only minor differences being detected. Furthermore, our results clearly demonstrate that the fecal microbiota reflects the microbial composition of intestinal tissue but not that of lung tissue.