Linking gut microbes and cancer
Official title: Exploiting Public Metagenomic Data to Uncover Cancer-Microbiome Relationships
Funded at Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy · NIH-11184391 · Data updated 2026-11-12
Researchers will combine and standardize thousands of publicly available microbiome samples to find patterns showing how microbes relate to cancer, with a focus on colorectal cancer.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (New York, United States) |
| Project start | July 1, 2019 |
| Project end | August 31, 2029 |
| Funding year | 2025 |
| Award (this year) | $427,475 |
| NIH project number | 5R01CA230551-07 |
| Project ID | NIH-11184391 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
People with colorectal or other cancers who can provide stool, tumor, or other microbiome samples, or whose existing sequencing data could be shared, would be most relevant to this work.
✕Less likely to help
Patients without available microbiome samples or whose cancers are unlikely to involve microbial factors are unlikely to see direct benefits from this database-focused work in the short term.
What this research studies
This project brings together large collections of publicly available microbiome sequencing data and harmonizes them so results can be compared across studies. The team will add information about bacterial shapes, physiologies, and predicted metabolic functions, and build tools to find similar microbial signatures. They will expand two curated resources (BugSigDB and curatedMetagenomicData), create workflows to process raw sequencing records, and run meta-analyses across thousands of studies. The goal is searchable, user-friendly databases and analysis tools that help researchers spot reproducible microbe–cancer links.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, the work could reveal consistent microbial patterns tied to cancer risk or treatment response that help guide new diagnostics or therapies.
How similar studies have gone: Previous studies have linked gut microbes to colorectal cancer and to responses to immunotherapy, but combining and standardizing thousands of public datasets at this scale is largely new.
Where this research is happening
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Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy
New York, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Waldron, Levi — Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy
- Study coordinator: Waldron, Levi
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.