<i>Fusobacterium nucleatum</i> is associated with inflammation and poor survival in early-stage HPV-negative tongue cancer

Abstract

Persistent pathogen infection is a known cause of malignancy, although with sparse systematic evaluation across tumor types. We present a comprehensive landscape of 1060 infectious pathogens across 239 whole exomes and 1168 transcriptomes of breast, lung, gallbladder, cervical, colorectal, and head and neck tumors. We identify known cancer-associated pathogens consistent with the literature. In addition, we identify a significant prevalence of <i>Fusobacterium</i> in head and neck tumors, comparable to colorectal tumors. The <i>Fusobacterium</i>-high subgroup of head and neck tumors occurs mutually exclusive to human papillomavirus, and is characterized by overexpression of miRNAs associated with inflammation, elevated innate immune cell fraction and nodal metastases. We validate the association of <i>Fusobacterium</i> with the inflammatory markers <i>IL1B</i>, <i>IL6</i> and <i>IL8</i>, miRNAs <i>hsa-mir-451a</i>, <i>hsa-mir-675</i> and <i>hsa-mir-486-1</i>, and <i>MMP10</i> in the tongue tumor samples. A higher burden of <i>Fusobacterium</i> is also associated with poor survival, nodal metastases and extracapsular spread in tongue tumors defining a distinct subgroup of head and neck cancer.