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Whether you had breakfast this morning or not, pancreas Working quietly behind the scenes. This important organ produces enzymes that help digest food and hormones that regulate metabolism. But when something goes wrong with your pancreasthe consequences can be devastating.
pancreatic cancer Earned the grim nickname “The Silent Killer” for good reason. By the time most patients develop symptoms, the disease is often already advanced and treatment options become severely limited.
exist U.K. alone, there were more than 10,700 new cases and 9,500 deaths pancreatic cancer Recorded between 2017 and 2019, the incidence rate continues to rise.
The most common form is pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which arises in the pancreatic duct—the tube that connects the pancreas to the small intestine.
When tumors form here, they block the flow of digestive enzymes, causing problems with energy metabolism and leaving patients feeling chronically fatigued and unwell. However, these symptoms are often very subtle and can easily be overlooked or attributed to other causes.
Now, researchers are turning to an unexpected source for early detection of PDAC: stool samples. While analyzing stool may seem an unlikely way to diagnose cancer, scientists are discovering that our poop contains a treasure trove of information about our health.
That’s because your gut is home to trillions of bacteria – in fact, there are approximately 40 trillion to 30 trillion more bacterial cells in your body than there are human cells. These microscopic residents form complex communities that can reflect your health, including the presence of disease.
Because PDAC usually occurs in the part of the pancreas that is connected to the intestines, and most people have regular bowel movements, stool samples provide a practical, non-invasive window into what’s going on in the body.
Global evidence accumulation
This innovative approach has been validated in studies in several countries, including Japan, China and Spain. The latest breakthrough comes from a 2025 international study involving Finnish and Iranian researchers to examine the relationship between the two gut bacteria and the incidence of pancreatic cancer in different populations.
About the author
Falk Hildebrand is a Bioinformatician Research Fellow at the Quadram Institute.
Daisuke Suzuki is a PhD student in the gut microbiome at the Quadram Institute.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. read Original article.
Researchers collected stool samples and analyzed bacteria DNA A technique called 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing is used. Despite the complex name, the principle is simple: scientists sequence and compare the genetic regions found in each bacterial genome, allowing them to identify and count different bacterial species simultaneously.
The results of the Finnish-Iranian study are shocking. People with PDAC have reduced intestinal bacterial diversity, with certain species either abundant or deficient compared to healthy people. What’s more, the team developed an artificial intelligence model that can accurately distinguish cancer patients from healthy people based solely on their gut bacterial signatures.
The field of microbiome research is growing rapidly. While this study used amplicon sequencing, new methods such as “shotgun metagenomic sequencing” are providing more detailed insights. This advanced technology captures the entire bacterial genome content rather than focusing on individual genes, providing unprecedented resolution and even detecting whether bacteria have recently been transferred between individuals.
These technological advances are driving fundamental shifts in how we think about health and disease. We are moving away from a purely human-centered view to understanding ourselves as “humans plus the microbiome” – complex ecosystems in which our bacterial partners play a vital role in our well-being.
Beyond pancreatic cancer
This possibility extends far beyond pancreatic cancer. At Quadram, we are applying a similar approach to studying colorectal cancer. We have analyzed more than 1,000 stool samples using advanced computational tools that piece together bacterial genomes and their functions from DNA fragments. This ongoing work aims to reveal how gut microbes behave in colorectal cancer, just as other scientists have done for PDAC.
The two-way interaction between cancer and bacteria is particularly fascinating – not only can certain bacterial profiles indicate the presence of disease, but the disease itself can change gut microbiomeAs we’ve shown before in Parkinson’s disease, it creates a complex web of cause and effect that researchers are still unraveling.
Still, by understanding how our microbial partners respond to and influence disease, we gain insights that could revolutionize diagnosis and treatment. Our past research has shown that this is extremely complex and sometimes difficult to understand, but developments in biotechnology and artificial intelligence are increasingly helping us understand this microscopic world.
For cancer patients and their families, this and other advances in microbiome research offer hope for early detection. While we are still in the early stages of translating these findings into clinical practice, the potential to catch this silent killer before it becomes deadly could change outcomes for thousands of patients, but this requires more careful and fundamental research.
The microbial perspective on health is no longer a distant scientific curiosity—it is quickly becoming a life-saving reality. As researchers continue to explore this inner frontier, we’re learning that the answers to some of medical’s most challenging questions may lie hidden in the waste we flush away every day.