Terrisporobacter Gut Microbe Links to Thyroid Cancer Progression

A figshare document by Jia Li presents a multi-stage study linking the gut microbe Terrisporobacter to papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). The analysis includes Mendelian randomization results from large-scale GWAS data and validation in 450 PTC patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas. It reports correlations between microbial abundance, NTRK1 gene expression, immune cell infiltration, and patient survival.

Use Cases

• Validate the Mendelian randomization-derived Odds Ratio (OR = 2.06) linking Terrisporobacter abundance to PTC risk in independent patient cohorts.
• Analyze the correlation between Terrisporobacter signals and immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment features like M2 macrophage infiltration (ρ = 0.25) and decreased CD8+ T cells (ρ = -0.19).
• Investigate the association between Terrisporobacter abundance and NTRK1 oncogene upregulation (ρ = 0.35) as a potential driver of poorer overall survival (HR = 2.15).
• Use the reported in vitro findings on NTRK1 upregulation and cell proliferation to design follow-up experiments on the gut-thyroid axis.

Strengths

• The study validates findings across multiple stages: Mendelian randomization, analysis of 450 TCGA patient records, and in vitro experiments.
• Reports specific statistical measures including an Odds Ratio of 2.06, correlation coefficients (ρ), and a Hazard Ratio of 2.15 for survival analysis.
• Provides a mechanistic link between a specific gut microbe (Terrisporobacter), an oncogene (NTRK1), and the tumor immune microenvironment.

Limitations

• The dataset is a 16.3 KB DOCX document containing summarized results, not the raw underlying patient-level or experimental data.
• Sample size for the primary patient cohort validation is limited to 450 records from TCGA.
• The document format (DOCX) is not machine-readable tabular data, limiting direct computational analysis.

Provenance

Source

Author Jia Li via figshare.

Collection Method

Multi-stage design using two-sample Mendelian randomization on GWAS data, validation in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort, and in vitro experiments with PTC cell lines.

Freshness

Last updated March 25, 2026.