Last January 15th, we had the pleasure to celebrate our 2nd annual consortium meeting in Berlin. With the presence of all our scientific partners and representatives of our two patient organizations Dice and DSFJEMK, we have a day full of exciting discussions followed by a delicious food at YOSOY Tapas restaurant.

The German Society of Hematology and Medical Oncology (DGHO) celebrated its annual meeting in Hamburg last October. Prof. Annalen Bleckmann represented our consortium an presented the PerMiCCion project during a special workshop on colorectal cancer in young adults. Representatives of other consortia funded in the working group "Prevention" working group of the National Decade against Cancer Initiative (BMBF) were also present. We are grateful for the fruitful discussions and look forward to future collaborations.

At the core of PerMiCCion’s research is to understand how shaping the gut microbiota can be beneficial for colorectal cancer diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment. But studies have shown that the gut microbiota can sometimes be a bit difficult to modify in some patients. Knowing a priori which individuals will be resistant to gut microbial change after a lifestyle intervention may help to optimize and personalize disease therapies and better target resilient dysbiosis microbiomes.
In the study “Identification of robust and generalizable biomarkers for microbiome-based stratification in lifestyle interventions”” led by Prof. Gianni Panagiotou, we demonstrated that microbiome resistance to change in response to lifestyle interventions can be predicted by simply using the baseline microbiome composition.
We are confident that this knowledge may help in the future to further improve the design of personalized lifestyle approaches.
We are very grateful to our collaborators and BMBF and the National Decade against Cancer for their support.
Original Publication:
Chen J, Leal Siliceo S*, Ni Y, Nielsen HB*, Xu A, Panagiotou G* (2023). Identification of robust and generalizable biomarkers for microbiome-based stratification in lifestyle interventions. Microbiome. August 8;11(1):178. DOI: 10.1186/s40168-023-01604-z

In the research work entitled “Candida expansion in the gut of lung cancer patients associates with an ecological signature that supports growth under dysbiotic conditions” we investigated the role of the gut microbiome on Candida expansion in lung cancer patients at risk of candidiasis.
As a first step prior to bloodstream infection during invasive candidiasis, Candida species outgrow other fungi and dominate the gut community. How gut bacteria might promote or restrict this overgrowth is still unclear. By developing machine learning models, we could predict high or low Candida levels and propose a mechanism for Candida colonization.
Our results suggest that dysbiotic changes to the local microflora can create a metabolic niche for Candida species to use lactate as a Carbon source under low Oxygen conditions. We speculate that this advantage may help Candida to overtake their fungal competitors in the human gut.
The research was led by PerMiCCion’s coordinator Prof. Gianni Panagiotou and first author Bastian Seelbinder. We are very grateful to our collaborators and BMBF and the National Decade against Cancer for their support.
Original Publication: Seelbinder B#, Lohinai Z*, Vazquez-Uribe R, Brunke S, Chen X, Mirhakkak M, Lopez-Escalera S, Dome B, Megyesfalvi Z, Berta J, Galffy G, Dulka E, Wellejus A, Weiss GJ, Bauer M, Hube B, Sommer MOA, Panagiotou G (2023) Candida expansion in the gut of lung cancer patients associates with an ecological signature that supports growth under dysbiotic conditions. Nat Commun 14(1), 2673.

Last April Dr. Biljana Gigic and Dr. Victoria Damerell participated in the renewed international meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.
We congratulate Victoria for receiving the AACR Women in Cancer Research Award for her research on tryptophan metabolites in colorectal cancer!

As part of a collaboration with the German Foundation for Young Adults with Cancer (DSFJEMK, from the initials in German), researchers of PerMiCCion have participated in a photo and video production with colorectal cancer patients. Prof. Annalen Bleckmann and her team presented our project and explained the science behind using of microbiome-based tools to manage colorectal cancer in young adults.
We are very pleased with the results of the video and photo production, and look forward to continuing our work with the patient organization DSFJEMK.
All videos can be found here. Don’t forget to visit the DSFJEMK website for more information on their wonderful work.

On March 02, the PerMiCCion consortium met with all consortia funded in the working group “Prevention” of the National Decade against cancer initiative at the BMBF building (Federal Ministry of Education and Research) in Berlin.
The event, organized by the BMBF with the support of the German Aerospace Center, was a great opportunity to strengthen communication between the four funded consortia, discuss the progress of the projects and identify common challenges and collaboration opportunities. Collaborations between consortia will synergize research and accelerate the discovery of new diagnostic, prognostic, and treatment methods to combat colon cancer in young patients.
In addition, we have the pleasure to get a look at the patient perspectives, thanks to the excellent talk of Dr. Dirk Hellrung. The patient's role goes beyond mere participation in clinical trials and is progressively shifting to a more active role that can influence the way research is conducted.
We thank all the attendees of the event for the exciting exchange of ideas and a special thanks to BMBF and DLR for making this meeting possible. Until next time!

On November 17, the PerMiCCion consortium met for the first time in Berlin. Since the launch of this collaborative project in May 2022, Dr. Gianni Panagiotou and the scientists involved in PerMiCCion have been meeting regularly via video conferencing to set up the first steps of the project. Now they finally had the opportunity to personally meet each other, discuss the work achieved so far, and plan the future directions of the consortium. In addition, we were delighted to be joined by the founder of the German Foundation for Young Adults with Cancer, a non-profit organization supporting young cancer patients.