Propionibacterium (largely reclassified as Cutibacterium for skin species) is a genus of Gram-positive, anaerobic to aerotolerant bacteria that produce propionic acid as their primary fermentation product. P. acnes (now Cutibacterium acnes) is the dominant skin commensal and acne pathogen, but the genus appears across multiple cancer microbiome studies.
Cancer Associations
Prostate cancer: Enriched in tumor tissue; associated with chronic prostatic inflammation [1].
Ovarian cancer: Part of peritoneal and tumor microbiome [2][3].
Breast cancer: Positively associated with breast cancer risk in oral microbiome [4].
CVD: Circulating microbial DNA including Propionibacterium detected in cardiovascular disease [5].
Jhommara Bautista, Walter D. Cardona-Maya, Kelly Gancino-Guevara et al. (2025). Bautista 2025 — Reprogramming Prostate Cancer Through the Microbiome. Frontiers in Medicine. doi:10.3389/fmed.2025.1690498
Lee SR, Lee JC, Kim SH et al. (2021). Altered Composition of Microbiota in Women with Ovarian Endometrioma: Microbiome Analyses of Extracellular Vesicles in the Peritoneal Fluid. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. doi:10.3390/ijms22094608
Min Zhang, Jiao Mo, Wei Huang et al. (2024). Zhang 2024 — The Ovarian Cancer-Associated Microbiome Contributes to the Tumor's Inflammatory Microenvironment. Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology. doi:10.3389/fcimb.2024.1440742
Zeni Wu, Doratha A. Byrd, Yunhu Wan et al. (2022). Wu et al. 2022 — The Oral Microbiome and Breast Cancer in the Ghana Breast Health Study. International Journal of Cancer. doi:10.1002/ijc.34145
Vasudevan Dinakaran, Andiappan Rathinavel, Muthuirulan Pushpanathan et al. (2014). Elevated Levels of Circulating DNA in Cardiovascular Disease Patients: Metagenomic Profiling of Microbiome in the Circulation. PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0105221
Zangeneh Z, Abdi-Ali A, Khamooshian K et al. (2021). Bacterial Variation in the Oral Microbiota in Multiple Sclerosis Patients. PLoS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0260384