No abstract

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide, and has a strong heritable basis. We report a genome-wide association analysis of 34,627 CRC cases and 71,379 controls of European ancestry that identifies SNPs at 31 new CRC risk loci. We also identify eight independent risk SNPs at the new and previously reported European CRC loci, and a further nine CRC SNPs at loci previously only identified in Asian populations. We use in situ promoter capture Hi-C (CHi-C), gene expression, and in silico annotation methods to identify likely target genes of CRC SNPs. Whilst these new SNP associations implicate target genes that are enriched for known CRC pathways such as Wnt and BMP, they also highlight novel pathways with no prior links to colorectal tumourigenesis. These findings provide further insight into CRC susceptibility and enhance the prospects of applying genetic risk scores to personalised screening and prevention.

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the leading cause of death from gynecological malignancy in the developed world accounting for 4 percent of deaths from cancer in women1. We performed a three-phase genome-wide association study of EOC survival in 8,951 EOC cases with available survival time data, and a parallel association analysis of EOC susceptibility. Two SNPs at 19p13.11, rs8170 and rs2363956, showed evidence of association with survival (overall P=5×10−4 and 6×10−4), but did not replicate in phase 3. However, the same two SNPs demonstrated genome-wide significance for risk of serous EOC (P=3×10−9 and 4×10−11 respectively). Expression analysis of candidate genes at this locus in ovarian tumors supported a role for the BRCA1 interacting gene C19orf62, also known as MERIT40, which contains rs8170, in EOC development.

There are no clear candidates for taxane/platinum pharmacogenetic markers. This study highlights the need for validation of putative genetic markers in large, well-defined clinical sample sets.