High-throughput sequencing-based investigation of viruses in human cancers by multi-enrichment approach

Viruses and other infectious agents cause more than 15% of human cancer cases. High-throughput sequencing-based studies of virus-cancer associations have mainly focused on cancer transcriptome data. Here we applied a diverse selection of pre-sequencing enrichment methods targeting all major viral groups, to characterise the viruses present in 197 samples from 18 sample types of cancerous origin. Using high-throughput sequencing we generated 710 datasets constituting 57 billion sequencing reads. Detailed in silico investigation of the viral content, including exclusion of viral artefacts, from de novo assembled contigs and individual sequencing reads yielded a map of the viruses detected. Our data reveals a virome dominated by papillomaviruses, anelloviruses, herpesviruses, and parvoviruses. More than half of the included samples contained one or more viruses, however, no link between specific viruses and cancer types were found. Our study sheds light on viral presence in cancers and provides highly relevant virome data for future reference.