PROSPECT-IMPACT

Investigation of a Microbiome-based Prediction Approach for Colorectal Tumors in PROSPECT

PROSPECT-IMPACT is an academic research study led by the University of Trento (CIBIO, Department of Cellular, Computational and Integrative Biology - CIBIO), in collaboration with King’s College London.

PROSPECT-IMPACT is established within the larger context of PROSPECT, a project awarded by Cancer Grand Challenges (CGC) and funded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK), the National Cancer Institute (NIH), the Bowelbabe Fund for CRUK, and the Institut National du Cancer.

The broad objective of the PROSPECT team is to identify the risk factors contributing to the global increase in colorectal cancers (CRC) among young individuals. In this context, PROSPECT-IMPACT aims to validate a new screening tool for CRC that utilizes information from the gut microbiome. The study builds upon prior published evidence (Piccinno et al., Nat Med 2025), which found that the microbes present in the stool (the gut microbiome) are strongly predictive of CRC.

The proposed screening tool is a gut microbiome-based, non-invasive method for CRC detection.