A New Dimension in Tumor Heterogeneity: Intratumoral Bacteria Impact Multifocal Hepatocellular Carcinoma Development

Lu and colleagues identified profound microbial heterogeneity across individual tumor nodules in multifocal hepatocellular carcinoma, revealing that specific bacterial consortia enrich in metastatic clones and drive epithelial-mesenchymal transition and immune suppression. Their study places the intratumoral microbiome alongside genomic and transcriptomic diversity as a key modulator of intrahepatic tumor evolution. See related article by Lu et al., p. 1630.