Gastric Cancer and Gut Microbiota: Unveiling Metabolic Pathways, Microbial Interactions, and Therapeutic Response

The gastrointestinal tract harbors a complex microbial ecosystem that plays a central role in host metabolism, mucosal immunity, inflammation, epithelial barrier function, and tumorigenesis. Increasing evidence suggests that alterations in the gastric and gut microbiota are closely associated with the development and progression of gastric cancer, one of the major gastrointestinal malignancies with substantial global disease burden.With the rapid development of 16S rRNA gene sequencing, shotgun metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metabolomics, and integrative multi-omics approaches, microbiome research has moved from descriptive profiling toward mechanistic interpretation and clinical translation in gastric cancer. Microbial signatures may contribute to early detection, molecular and clinical stratification, prognosis prediction, treatment selection, and monitoring of therapeutic response. The gastric microbiota has also been linked to chemotherapy efficacy, immunotherapy response, radiotherapy-related toxicity, postoperative outcomes, cancer recurrence, and survivorship.However, challenges remain in translating microbiome findings into gastric cancer care. These include heterogeneity in sampling methods, sequencing platforms, bioinformatics pipelines, population backgrounds, diet, medication exposure, antibiotic use, tumor site, disease stage, and treatment regimens. There is a need for clinically grounded studies that connect microbial community structure and function with tumor phenotypes, oncological outcomes, host immune responses, and therapeutic interventions.This Research Topic aims to provide a platform for researchers to share recent advances in gastric microbiota sequencing, gastric cancer biology, host-microbe interactions, microbial metabolites, and microbiome-based translational oncology. Potential themes include, but are not limited to:o Gastric microbiota profiles and microbial signatures in gastric cancer, including tumor location, molecular subtypes, precancerous lesions, metastasis, and recurrenceo 16S rRNA sequencing, shotgun metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metabolomics, and multi-omics studies of gastric and gastrointestinal clinical sampleso Microbial biomarkers for diagnosis, disease classification, prognosis, recurrence, and treatment responseo Gastric microbiota and gastric tumorigenesis, including inflammation, immune regulation, epithelial barrier dysfunction, microbial metabolites, genomic instability, carcinogenic pathways, and the tumor microenvironmento Gastric microbiota and response to chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy, surgery, and perioperative management in gastric cancero Microbiome changes associated with antibiotics, proton pump inhibitors, probiotics, prebiotics, diet, enteral nutrition, fecal microbiota transplantation, and other clinical interventionso Host-microbe interactions in gastric cancer initiation, progression, metastasis, mucosal immunity, systemic inflammation, and cancer microenvironment regulationo Bioinformatics pipelines, machine learning models, and integrative approaches for microbiome-based clinical prediction Topic editors: Laiping Fang, Zhenhua Zhang, Meng Li Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/86121/gastric-cancer-and-gut-microbiota-unveiling-metabolic-pathways-microbial-interactions-and-therapeutic-response