**12. Conclusion**

The gut microbiome forms an integral part of the human body and is often referred to as the "forgotten organ". Its role in health and disease has been studied extensively over the past two decades but the possibility of its role in cancer causation has caught the eye of researchers. The association between the gut microbiome and cancer has provided new insight into understanding the pathophysiology of cancer and planning the management strategies. There is a strong correlation between gut microbial dysbiosis and the development of colorectal and gastric adenocarcinomas, however, their role in hepatobiliary cancers, especially GBC remains poorly understood. This can be owed to the short survival of GBC resulting in vast unexplored domains of this disease and the difficulty to isolate the bacteria involved via routine culture methods. Moreover, the lack of an ideal animal or a human model has greatly limited the research. The advent of the next-generation sequencing methods has seen emerging evidence linking various bacteria to the etiopathogenesis of GBC, but causality is far from proven. A higher level of evidence either in the form of larger meta-analyses or larger epidemiological studies is needed to establish a consensus.

*Role of Gut Microbiome and Enteric Bacteria in Gallbladder Cancer DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104404*
