From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)

Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute was recently awarded a $25 million grant to conduct research about how specific microbes in the body may lead to colorectal cancer. The grant from Cancer Research UK was awarded to Dana-Farber alone out of 130 teams who had applied for the funding.

With this funding, Dana-Farber will research the difference between healthy microbiomes and those related to cancer. The researchers will also attempt to manipulate the microbiomes to prevent and treat cancer. The National Cancer Institute estimates that colorectal cancer will be the third-most common cancer diagnosed in 2018.

Dr. Matthew Meyerson, one of the investigators on the new project, said “Microbiome research has already thrown up a range of unexpected findings. With new genomic technologies, we can map the microbiome in incredible detail, so now is the right time to be investigation the phenomenon of cancer.”