Poster Session 2026

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- Amanda N. D. Adams
- Olivia Ambrose
- Prooksa Ananchuensook
- Victoria H Anderson
- Mariam Baig
- Suchandra Banerjee
- Ofri Bar
- Leah C Beauchamp
- Paige K Berger
- Chandrima Bhattacharya
- Katy Bond
- Camille Briskin
- Amanda Darling
- Mengxi Du
- Guilherme Fahur Bottino
- Elsa Fristot
- Emmanuel A Gyimah
- Erik Hasenoehrl
- Kyoo Heo
- Nathan T Jacobs
- Jordan S L Jensen
- Yehoon Jo
- Da Jung Jung
- Roka Kakehi
- Thomas M Kuntz
- S. Li
- Valeria Lugo Mesa
- Xochitl C Morgan
- Jacob T Nearing
- Ana Nogal
- Maribel Okiye
- Wakako Okuda
- Lily A Palumbo
- Yiming Shi
- Jack T Sumner
- Vishnu Thayil Valappil
- Chahat Upreti
- Maggie Viland
- Dongyu Wang
- Ya Wang
- Xinyu Wang
- Yan Yan
- Yiyan Yang
Poster Session 2026
Viral associates of Colorectal Cancer in the human gut
Presented By: Chahat Upreti
Non-bacterial components of the human gut microbiome, particularly viruses, are increasingly recognized as important contributors to microbial community dynamics and host health. While bacterial contributions to colorectal cancer (CRC) have been extensively characterized, viral involvement remains less well understood, especially gut bacterial phage-host interactions and their relevance across the adenoma-carcinoma continuum. To investigate the landscape of the gut virome associated with CRC, we systematically analyzed an international collection of 3,693 gut metagenomes spanning 1,520 healthy, 702 adenoma, and 1,471 CRC cases, across seventeen publicly-available studies. Viral genome bins (VGBs) were profiled using BAQLaVa v0.5. We observed modest shifts in gut viral community composition associated with CRC status (PERMANOVA p < 0.01, R2 = 0.002). Several viral taxa were associated with CRC status, including Fohxhuevirus, Toutatisvirus and multiple viruses from the class Caudoviricites (q < 0.25). Notably, only 17 of these 76 significant associations of viruses could be assigned taxonomy at any level, underscoring the substantial undercharacterization of the gut virome. Among these, 38 viruses were positively associated with CRC and 38 with controls, with meta-analytic abundance coefficients ranging from 0.25 to 3.05 (CRC-associated) and −0.17 to −3.31 (control-associated). A Random Forest model trained on virome profiles achieved moderate cross-cohort performance in predicting CRC status (LODO AUC = 0.69), indicating the presence of CRC-associated signal within the gut virome. Trait enrichment analysis showed that DNA metabolism, host-contact and viral structure were enriched in CRC-associated viruses. Several eukaryotic viruses were detected, including those infecting fungi (Saccharomyces cerevisiae Ty1 virus) and plants (Triticum aestivum WIS2 virus), though these were generally low in prevalence and abundance and likely reflect dietary or environmental exposure. Hierarchical association testing using HAllA (based on Spearman correlations) identified robust associations between several known CRC-associated bacteria and novel viruses, including Bacteroides_fragilis_SGB1853 with VGB_99710, and Parvimonas_micra_SGB6653 with VGB_49250. Together, these results highlight the gut virome as a potential source of biomarkers and mechanistic insights in the CRC-associated microbiome.