PO.BCS02.02 · 生物信息与计算
癌症的微生物组基础模型:MiFM衍生的连续轨迹和风险时钟用于泛癌种免疫治疗应答预测
Microbiome foundation modeling of cancer: MiFM-derived continuous trajectories and risk clocks for pan-cancer immunotherapy response prediction
作者与单位 Authors & Affiliations
摘要 Abstract
中文摘要
背景:人体微生物组塑造癌症风险、进展和对免疫治疗的应答,但大多数现有微生物组模型是任务特异性的,无法在不同队列和测序平台间泛化。我们开发了MiFM(微生物组基础模型),这是一个在约200万份人类、动物和环境微生物组图谱上训练的自监督Transformer。MiFM将微生物群落编码为多层级token(物种、属和功能通路),并利用掩码重建加对比学习获得可迁移的嵌入表示,捕捉分类学和功能结构。本研究中,我们评估MiFM嵌入是否能支持对癌症轨迹和免疫治疗应答进行连续的、临床可解释的读出。
方法:我们从MiFM嵌入中衍生出两个连续指标:(1)疾病伪时间,将每位患者定位于微生物组编码的癌症进展轨迹上;(2)微生物组癌症风险时钟,在个体水平估计微生物组衍生的癌症风险和免疫治疗无应答。我们将该框架应用于涵盖正常黏膜、腺瘤和癌的结直肠癌(CRC)队列,以及12个独立的泛癌种免疫检查点阻断队列(n=1237)。此外,我们定义了一个基于微生物组的衰老加速特征,并评估其与疾病伪时间、风险时钟和总生存期的关联。
结果:在CRC中,疾病伪时间再现了腺瘤-癌序列,中位值分别为0.15(正常)、0.38(腺瘤)和0.72(癌;p<0.001),并且比传统分期更清晰地区分了疾病状态。风险时钟在组织学正常的黏膜中识别出高危个体,其微生物组嵌入类似于腺瘤(AUC=0.85)或癌(AUC=0.92),提示存在一个可干预的临床前窗口。在15个CRC队列(n=3739)中,基线肠道微生物组嵌入识别免疫检查点阻断无应答者的跨队列中位AUC为0.84,在一个非小细胞肺癌队列中AUC为0.95。衰老加速特征与疾病伪时间和风险时钟均相关,并独立预测总生存期(HR=2.52,p<0.001)。
结论:据我们所知,MiFM是首个应用于肿瘤学的大规模微生物组基础模型,产生了微生物组衍生的癌症进展和免疫治疗应答的连续读出。疾病伪时间和微生物组癌症风险时钟捕捉了超越传统分期的癌症轨迹,能够在外观正常的黏膜中超早期识别高危病变,并支持跨队列稳健预测免疫治疗耐药。该框架提供了具体的微生物组生物标志物和一个用于微生物组导向精准肿瘤学的可扩展平台。
查看英文原文 English abstract
Background: The human microbiome shapes cancer risk, progression and response to immunotherapy, but most existing microbiome models are task-specific and fail to generalize across cohorts and sequencing platforms. We developed MiFM (Microbiome Foundation Model), a self-supervised Transformer trained on ~2 million human, animal and environmental microbiome profiles. MiFM encodes communities as multi-level tokens (species, genus and functional pathways) and uses masked reconstruction plus contrastive learning to obtain transferable embeddings that capture taxonomic and functional structure. Here, we evaluated whether MiFM embeddings can support continuous, clinically interpretable readouts of cancer trajectories and immunotherapy response.
Methods: From MiFM embeddings we derived two continuous metrics: (1) a disease pseudotime placing each patient along a microbiome-encoded cancer progression trajectory; and (2) a microbiome cancer risk clock estimating microbiome-derived cancer risk and immunotherapy non-response at the individual level. We applied this framework to colorectal cancer (CRC) cohorts spanning normal mucosa, adenoma and carcinoma, and to 12 independent pan-cancer immune checkpoint blockade cohorts (n =1237). We additionally defined a microbiome-based aging acceleration signature and evaluated its association with disease pseudotime, the risk clock and overall survival.
Results: In CRC, disease pseudotime recapitulated the adenoma-carcinoma sequence, with median values of 0.15 (normal), 0.38 (adenoma) and 0.72 (carcinoma; p < 0.001), and separated disease states more clearly than conventional stage. The risk clock identified high-risk individuals within histologically normal mucosa whose microbiome embeddings resembled adenomas (AUC = 0.85) or carcinomas (AUC = 0.92), indicating a preclinical window for intervention. Across 15 CRC cohorts (n = 3739), baseline gut microbiome embeddings identified non-responders to immune checkpoint blockade with a median cross-cohort AUC of 0.84 and an AUC of 0.95 in a non-small cell lung cancer cohort. The aging acceleration signature correlated with both disease pseudotime and the risk clock and independently predicted overall survival (HR = 2.52, p < 0.001).
Conclusions: To our knowledge, MiFM is the first large-scale microbiome foundation model applied to oncology, yielding continuous microbiome-derived readouts of cancer progression and immunotherapy response. The disease pseudotime and microbiome cancer risk clock capture cancer trajectories beyond conventional staging, enable ultra-early identification of high-risk lesions in normal-appearing mucosa and support robust prediction of immunotherapy resistance across cohorts. This framework delivers concrete microbiome biomarkers and a scalable platform for microbiome-guided precision oncology.
利益披露 Disclosure
H. Shen, None..
Y. Bi, None..
Z. Lyu, None..
K. Chen, None..
X. Li, None.