Replication Study: < i > Fusobacterium nucleatum < /i > infection is prevalent in human colorectal carcinoma

As part of theReproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, we published a Registered Report (Repass et al., 2016), that described how we intended to replicate an experiment from the paper ‘Fusobacterium nucleatum infection is prevalent in human colorectal carcinoma ’ (Castellarin et al., 2012). Here we report the results. When measuringFusobacterium nucleatum DNA by qPCR in colorectal carcinoma (CRC), adjacent normal tissue, and separate matched control tissue, we did not detect a signal forF. nucleatum in most samples: 25% of CRCs, 15% of adjacent normal, and 0% of matched control tissue were positive based on quantitative PCR (qPCR) and confirmed by sequencing of the qPCR products. When only samples with detectableF. nucleatum in CRC and adjacent normal tissue were compared, the difference was not statistically significant, while the original study reported a statistically significant increase inF. nucleatum expression in CRC compared to adjacent normal tissue (Figure 2; Castellarin et al., 2012). Finally, we report a meta-analysis of the result, which suggestsF. nucleatum expression is increased in CRC, but is confounded by the inability to detectF. nucleatum in most samples. The difference inF. nucleatum expression between CRC and adjacent normal tissues was thus smaller than the original study, and not detected in most samples.
Source: eLife - Category: Biomedical Science Tags: Cancer Biology Source Type: research