Colorectal cancer landscape from gut microbiota: Insights into mutations, epigenetic dysregulation, and immune microenvironment alterations.

Gut microbiota significantly influences colorectal cancer development by inducing mutations, epigenetic changes, and immune evasion, with specific microbial species acting at different tumor stages.

• Why it matters: Understanding how microbiota drives CRC is crucial because it offers potential for novel prevention, diagnosis, and treatment strategies, addressing gaps in current approaches.
• What they did: The review synthesizes molecular biology, microbiology, and immunology data from studies involving microbial-induced DNA damage, epigenetic alterations, and immune microenvironment disruption across CRC stages.
• The result: Findings support microbiota-targeted interventions to reduce CRC risk, enhance early detection, and improve therapies, emphasizing the promise of microbiota-based clinical applications.