Registered report: Intestinal inflammation targets cancer-inducing activity of the microbiota

Abstract

The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology seeks to address growing concerns about reproducibility in scientific research by conducting replications of 50 papers in the field of cancer biology published between 2010 and 2012. This Registered report describes the proposed replication plan of key experiments from ‘Intestinal Inflammation Targets Cancer-Inducing Activity of the Microbiota’ by Arthur et al. (2012), published in Science in 2012. Arthur and colleagues identified a genotoxic island in Escherichia coli NC101 that appeared to be responsible for causing neoplastic lesions in inflammation-induced IL10-/- mice treated with azoxymethane. The experiments that will be replicated are those reported in Figure 4 (Arthur et al., 2012). Arthur and colleagues inoculated IL10-/- mice with a mutated strain of E. coli NC101 lacking the genotoxic island, and showed that those mice suffered from fewer neoplastic lesions than mice inoculated with the wild type form of E. coli NC101 (Figure 4). The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology is a collaboration between the Center for Open Science and Science Exchange, and the results of the replications will be published by eLife.

Keywords: Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology; human biology; infectious disease; intestinal inflammation; medicine; methodology; microbiology; mouse.