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Assessment of polygenic architecture and risk prediction based on common variants across fourteen cancers

  • Glioma International Case-Control Study (GICC)
  • , International Lung Cancer Consortium (ILCCO)
  • , Integrative Analysis of Lung Cancer Etiology and Risk (INTEGRAL) Consortium
  • , International Consortium of Investigators Working on Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Epidemiologic Studies (InterLymph)
  • , Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC)
  • , Oral Cancer GWAS
  • , Pancreatic Cancer Case-Control Consortium (PanC4)
  • , Pancreatic Cancer Cohort Consortium (PanScan)
  • , Prostate Cancer Association Group to Investigate Cancer Associated Alterations in the Genome (PRACTICAL)
  • , Renal Cancer GWAS
  • , Testicular Cancer Consortium (TECAC)
  • , Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC)
  • , Barrett’s and Esophageal Adenocarcinoma Consortium (BEACON)
  • , Colon Cancer Family Registry (CCFR)
  • , Transdisciplinary Studies of Genetic Variation in Colorectal Cancer (CORECT)
  • , Endometrial Cancer Association Consortium (ECAC)
  • , Genetics and Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer Consortium (GECCO)
  • , Melanoma Genetics Consortium (GenoMEL)
  • The University of Hong Kong
  • National Institutes of Health
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Johns Hopkins University
  • University of Cambridge
  • Cancer Council Victoria
  • University of Melbourne
  • Monash University
  • Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalier de l'Université Laval (CRCHUL)
  • Karolinska Institutet
  • Stockholm County Council
  • Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics
  • Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital
  • German Cancer Research Center
  • University of Hamburg
  • Queensland Institute of Medical Research
  • American Cancer Society
  • Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
  • University of Southern California
  • University of Virginia
  • Moffitt Cancer Center
  • University of Birmingham
  • University of Oxford
  • Brigham and Women’s Hospital
  • Harvard University
  • University of Leeds
  • Université Paris Cité
  • University of Western Australia
  • Baylor College of Medicine
  • The Institute of Cancer Research
  • University of California at San Francisco
  • Umeå University
  • Case Western Reserve University
  • University of Toronto
  • International Agency for Research on Cancer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

102 Scopus citations

Abstract

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have led to the identification of hundreds of susceptibility loci across cancers, but the impact of further studies remains uncertain. Here we analyse summary-level data from GWAS of European ancestry across fourteen cancer sites to estimate the number of common susceptibility variants (polygenicity) and underlying effect-size distribution. All cancers show a high degree of polygenicity, involving at a minimum of thousands of loci. We project that sample sizes required to explain 80% of GWAS heritability vary from 60,000 cases for testicular to over 1,000,000 cases for lung cancer. The maximum relative risk achievable for subjects at the 99th risk percentile of underlying polygenic risk scores (PRS), compared to average risk, ranges from 12 for testicular to 2.5 for ovarian cancer. We show that PRS have potential for risk stratification for cancers of breast, colon and prostate, but less so for others because of modest heritability and lower incidence.

Original languageEnglish
Article number3353
JournalNature Communications
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2020

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