A new study shows that a common oral bacterium linked to a virulent form of colorectal cancer could be driving tumor growth.
The discovery was made in a study published March 20 in Nature. Researchers from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center performed a variety of tests on human stool samples and mice to document the transfer of this bacterium, Fusobacterium nucleatum, which occurred in about half of the colorectal cancers in tumors removed from 200 patients.
