Four years ago, a study suggested that a common type of fungus might contribute to the development of pancreatic cancer.
This proposition offered a glimmer of hope for a new perspective on this deadly disease. However, Duke Health researchers attempting to validate this claim found no such correlation.
Their findings have been published in the journal Nature, indicating no connection between the pancreatic microbiome and pancreatic cancer development.
Dr. Peter Allen, the senior author of the study and Professor in the Department of Surgery at Duke University School of Medicine, said, “We were intrigued by the original finding, as were many research teams.
There is a growing body of literature connecting the human microbiome to disease, and this was particularly compelling for pancreatic cancer.
But our findings did not support an association between fungi and the development of pancreatic cancer in humans.”
The Duke team attempted to replicate the 2019 study, also published in Nature by a different team of researchers, which suggested that the use of antifungals or other preventative measures might help avoid this form of cancer.
Despite analyzing the original team’s raw sequencing data and conducting further studies using pancreatic cancer tissue in Duke repositories, the Duke researchers could not reproduce the initial results.
Dr. Allen added, “We believe our findings highlight the challenges of using low biomass samples for microbiome sequencing studies.
The inclusion of appropriate negative controls and efforts to identify and remove sequencing contaminants is critical to the interpretation of microbiome data.”
Ashley A. Fletcher, Matthew S. Kelly, and Austin M. Eckhoff were also part of the research team along with Dr. Allen.
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The study was published in Nature.
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