Endometrial cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer of the female reproductive tract in developed countries. Through genome-wide association studies (GWAS), we have previously identified eight risk loci for endometrial cancer. Here, we present an expanded meta-analysis of 12,906 endometrial cancer cases and 108,979 controls (including new genotype data for 5624 cases) and identify nine novel genome-wide significant loci, including a locus on 12q24.12 previously identified by meta-GWAS of endometrial and colorectal cancer. At five loci, expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) analyses identify candidate causal genes; risk alleles at two of these loci associate with decreased expression of genes, which encode negative regulators of oncogenic signal transduction proteins (SH2B3 (12q24.12) and NF1 (17q11.2)). In summary, this study has doubled the number of known endometrial cancer risk loci and revealed candidate causal genes for future study.

Endometrial cancer is the most common malignancy of the female genital tract in developed countries. To identify genetic variants associated with endometrial cancer risk, we undertook a genome-wide association study involving 1,265 endometrial cancer cases from Australia and the UK and 5,190 controls from the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium. Genotype frequencies in cases and controls were compared for 519,655 SNPs. Forty-seven SNPs that showed evidence of association with endometrial cancer in stage 1 were genotyped in 3,957 additional cases and 6,886 controls. We identified an endometrial cancer susceptibility locus close to HNF1B on chromosome 17q (SNP rs4430796: P=7.1×10−10), that is also associated with risk of prostate cancer and is inversely associated with type 2 diabetes.