The contribution of the microbiota to disease progression and treatment efficacy is often neglected when determining who is at the highest risk of developing gastrointestinal cancers or designing treatment strategies for patients. We reviewed the current literature on the effect of the human microbiota on cancer risk, prognosis, and treatment efficacy. We highlight emerging research that seeks to identify microbial signatures as biomarkers for various gastrointestinal cancers, and discuss how we could harness knowledge of the microbiome to detect, prevent, and treat these cancers. Finally, we outline further research needed in the field of gastrointestinal cancers and the microbiota, and describe the efforts required to increase the accuracy and reproducibility of data linking the microbiome to cancer.

当确定谁最有可能患胃肠道癌或为患者设计治疗策略时，微生物群对疾病进展和治疗效果的贡献通常被忽略。我们回顾了有关人类微生物群对癌症风险，预后和治疗效果的影响的最新文献。我们重点介绍了新兴的研究，这些研究试图将微生物特征识别为各种胃肠道癌症的生物标记，并讨论我们如何利用微生物组的知识来检测，预防和治疗这些癌症。最后，我们概述了在胃肠道癌和微生物群领域中需要进行的进一步研究，并描述了为增加将微生物组与癌症相关的数据的准确性和可重复性所需的工作。