Studies biased toward genomes of people with European ancestry still
predict cancer risk in diverse groups, research finds
More genomes from people with non-European ancestry are needed to improve
risk prediction for all, experts say

Date:
September 16, 2021
Source:
PLOS
Summary:
Data sets that are biased by having too many genomes from people
with European ancestry can still be applied to other ancestry
groups to predict their risk of developing breast and prostate
cancer, researchers report.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
Data sets that are biased by having too many genomes from people with
European ancestry can still be applied to other ancestry groups to predict their risk of developing breast and prostate cancer. Lars Fritsche of
the University of Michigan and colleagues report these findings in a
new study published Sept. 16 in PLOS Genetics.


========================================================================== Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) use hundreds or thousands
of genomes to find genetic variations linked to specific traits or
diseases. Ultimately, geneticists hope to use GWAS results to assign individuals a polygenic risk score (PRS) that predicts their risk of
developing a complex disease involving multiple genes, such as diabetes
or heart disease, based on which variations they carry. However, most
known genetic risk factors, especially for cancer, are based almost
exclusively on studies of individuals with European ancestry.

Currently, it is unclear if these results can be used to estimate a PRS
for people from other groups.

In the new study, researchers used GWAS results from people with European ancestry and data from the UK Biobank to calculate a PRS for breast and prostate cancer for people with African, East Asian, European and South
Asian ancestry. They discovered that when they scaled the risk scores
within each group, they could identify individuals at higher risk of
breast and prostate cancer. The findings suggest it is possible to apply existing European ancestry GWAS results to provide risk scores for people
with diverse ancestry.

Of course, this is only a temporary solution. The researchers emphasize
that scientists must recruit more diverse participants for GWAS analyses
if they hope to realize the full potential of PRS in helping to detect
and prevent cancer across ethnic groups.

"Surprisingly, the use of summary statistics from very large,
European-based cancer GWAS for PRS construction and their ancestry
specific scaling provided meaningful predictors of cancer risk," the researchers add. "While the performance of the breast and prostate cancer
PRS was decent across all analyzed ancestry groups, the applicability of
such a compromise solution needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis." ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by PLOS. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Lars G. Fritsche, Ying Ma, Daiwei Zhang, Maxwell Salvatore,
Seunggeun
Lee, Xiang Zhou, Bhramar Mukherjee. On cross-ancestry cancer
polygenic risk scores. PLOS Genetics, 2021; 17 (9): e1009670 DOI:
10.1371/ journal.pgen.1009670 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210916142913.htm

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