Comparative microbiota profiling of cutaneous tumors identifies Staphylococcus aureus as a possible driver of neoplasia development

Malignant epithelial skin tumors (e.g. cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, cSCC) arises from specific precursors (e.g. actinic keratosis, AK). During tumor development the host-microbiota equilibrium is altered and a selected pro-inflammatory cutaneous microbiota might drive cancer progression. Thus to assess the impact of microbiota in progression of AK to cSCC, we used comparative 16S rDNA based microbial community profiling, expression analysis and immunophenotyping of human skin cancer samples. The study encompassed formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) samples from AK (n=12), SCC (n=12) and BCC (Basal cell carcinoma, n=13) cases. Microbiota analysis was performed using MiSeq Illumina 16S rDNA sequencing (V1-2 region). The dataset was denoised, quality filtered and analysed using MOTHUR and QIIME.