Intratumoral mycobiome heterogeneity influences the tumor microenvironment and immunotherapy outcomes in renal cell carcinoma

2025/04/09 by Weiming Mou, Zhixing Deng, Lingxuan Zhu +21 · 1 voice · 33 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · #Biology #Cancer #Cancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers #Cancer immunotherapy #Cancer research #Ecology #Gut microbiota and health #Immunotherapy #Internal medicine #Medicine #Mycobiota #Pancreatic and Hepatic Oncology Research #Pathology #Renal cell carcinoma #Tumor cells #Tumor microenvironment

paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/sciadv.adu1727

published in Science Advances 11(15), eadu1727 (American Association for the Advancement of Science)

openalex publication_date 2025/04/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

The intratumoral mycobiome plays a crucial role in the tumor microenvironment, but its impact on renal cell carcinoma (RCC) remains unclear. We collected and quantitatively profiled the intratumoral mycobiome data from 1044 patients with RCC across four international cohorts, of which 466 patients received immunotherapy. Patients were stratified into mycobiota ecology-depauperate and mycobiota ecology-flourishing (MEF) groups based on fungal abundance. The MEF group had worse prognosis, higher fungal diversity, down-regulated lipid catabolism, and exhausted CD8 + T cells. We developed the intratumoral mycobiota signature and intratumoral mycobiota-related genes expression signature, which robustly predicted prognosis and immunotherapy outcomes in RCC and other cancers. Aspergillus tanneri was identified as a potential key fungal species influencing RCC prognosis. Our findings suggest that the intratumoral mycobiome suppresses lipid catabolism and induces T cell exhaustion in RCC.

Citations

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Cited by

• Host-microbiota interactions in genitourinary cancer immunotherapy

Discussions

• 🍄 There's fungus among us! Not a good announcement in an E coli lab: Fluorishing fungi in RCC samples signals poor prognosis doi.org/10.1126/scia... [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]

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