Abstract
Genetic factors play an important role in the susceptibility to pancreatic cancer (PC). However, established loci explain a small proportion of genetic heritability for PC; therefore, more progress is needed to find the missing ones. We aimed at identifying single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) affecting PC risk through effects on micro-RNA (miRNA) function. We searched in silico the genome for SNPs in miRNA seed sequences or 3 prime untranslated regions (3'UTRs) of miRNA target genes. Genome-wide association data of PC cases and controls from the Pancreatic Cancer Cohort (PanScan) Consortium and the Pancreatic Cancer Case–Control (PanC4) Consortium were re-analyzed for discovery, and genotyping data from two additional consortia (PanGenEU and PANDoRA) were used for replication, for a total of 14,062 cases and 11,261 controls. None of the SNPs reached genome-wide significance in the meta-analysis, but for three of them the associations were in the same direction in all the study populations and showed lower value of p in the meta-analyses than in the discovery phase. Specifically, rs7985480 was consistently associated with PC risk (OR = 1.12, 95% CI 1.07–1.17, p = 3.03 × 10−6 in the meta-analysis). This SNP is in linkage disequilibrium (LD) with rs2274048, which modulates binding of various miRNAs to the 3'UTR of UCHL3, a gene involved in PC progression. In conclusion, our results expand the knowledge of the genetic PC risk through miRNA-related SNPs and show the usefulness of functional prioritization to identify genetic polymorphisms associated with PC risk.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 693933 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Genetics |
| Volume | 12 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 30 Aug 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding:This work was supported by intramural funding of DKFZ; Fondazione Tizzi (www.fondazionetizzi.it); Fondazione Arpa (www.fondazionearpa.it); the Italian Ministry of Health grants (5 × 1000); Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC 5 × 1000; 12182); Fondazione Italiana Malattie Pancreas – Ministero Salute (FIMPCUP_J38D19000690001); Fondazione Cariverona: Oncology Biobank Project “Antonio Schiavi” (prot. 203885/2017); the Ministry of Health of the Czechia grants (NV19-09-00088 and NV19-08-00113); Palacky University Olomouc grant (IGA_LF_2020_005); and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czechia project INTER-COST (LTC19015). The PanGenEU has been partially supported by Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias (FIS), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spain (PI0902102, PI12/01635, PI12/00815, PI15/01573, and PI18/01347), and EU-6FP (018771-MOLDIAG-PACA) and EU-FP7-HEALTH (259737-CANCERALIAand 256974-EPC-TM-Net) projects and in the UK by funding of EUROPAC by Pancreatic Cancer United Kingdom. The ESTHER study was funded by the Baden-Württemberg State Ministry of Science, Research and Arts (Stuttgart, Germany).