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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 publication

DOI

10.1038/s41467-020-16483-3

Type

Journal article

Journal

Nature communications

Publication Date

07/2020

Volume

11

Addresses

Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Faculty of Science, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.

Keywords

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), 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), Animals, Humans, Neoplasms, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Incidence, Risk Assessment, Risk Factors, Multifactorial Inheritance, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Models, Genetic, Female, Male, Genome-Wide Association Study