The prostate cancer subtype defined by the presence of TMPRSS2:ERG has been shown to be molecularly and epidemiologically distinct. However, few studies have investigated germline genetic variants associating with TMPRSS2:ERG fusion status.
We performed a genome-wide association study with 396 TMPRSS2:ERG(+) cases, 390 TMPRSS2:ERG(-) cases and 2,386 cancer-free controls from the Physicians' Health Study (PHS), the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS), and a Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson (FH) Cancer Center Prostate Cancer Study. We applied logistic regression models to test the associations between ~5 million SNPs with TMPRSS2:ERG fusion status accounting for population stratification.
We did not identify genome-wide significant variants comparing the TMPRSS2:ERG(+) to the TMPRSS2:ERG(-) prostate cancer cases in the meta-analysis. When comparing TMPRSS2:ERG(+) prostate cancer cases with controls without prostate cancer, 10 genome-wide significant SNPs on chromosome 17q24.3 were observed in the meta-analysis. When comparing TMPRSS2:ERG(-) prostate cancer cases with controls without prostate cancer, two SNPs on chromosome 8q24.21 in the meta-analysis reached genome-wide significance.
We observed SNPs at several known prostate cancer risk loci (17q24.3, 1q32.1, and 8q24.21) that were differentially and exclusively associated with the risk of developing prostate tumors either with or without the gene fusion.
Our findings suggest that tumors with the TMPRSS2:ERG fusion exhibit a different germline genetic etiology compared to fusion negative cases.
Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology. 2023 Aug 09 [Epub ahead of print]
Chaoran Ma, Xiaoyu Wang, James Y Dai, Constance Turman, Peter Kraft, Konrad H Stopsack, Massimo Loda, Andreas Pettersson, Lorelei A Mucci, Janet L Stanford, Kathryn L Penney
University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, United States., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, SA, United States., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington, United States., Harvard School of Public Health, United States., Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States., Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States., Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, United States., Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden., Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, United States., Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.