Chemicals secreted by gut bacteria are linked to human colon cancers.

Metabolites called polyamines are made by gut bacteria to help them to form sticky aggregates called biofilms, and are used by human cells to regulate proliferation. Cynthia Sears at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Gary Siuzdak at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and their colleagues compared tissue samples from human colon cancers to those from healthy people, both with and without biofilms.

They found that cancer tissue with biofilms had 62 times more of the polyamine metabolite N1,N12-diacetylspermine than did healthy tissue with biofilms. Yet in samples that were biofilm-free, the cancer tissue contained only around 7 times more polyamine than the healthy sample. Antibiotic treatment reduced levels of this metabolite, suggesting that it comes from bacteria.

Therapies that target polyamine formation and biofilms could be a way to treat colon cancer, the authors note.

Cell Metab. http://doi.org/4jz (2015)