Integration of pathologic characteristics, genetic risk and lifestyle exposure for colorectal cancer survival assessment
Junyi Xin, Dongying Gu, Shuwei Li, Sangni Qian, Yifei Cheng, Wei Shao, Shuai Ben, Silu Chen, Linjun Zhu, Mingjuan Jin, Kun Chen, Zhibin Hu, Zhengdong Zhang, Mulong Du, Hongbing Shen, Meilin Wang
Abstract
Abstract The development of an effective survival prediction tool is key for reducing colorectal cancer mortality. Here, we apply a three-stage study to devise a polygenic prognostic score (PPS) for stratifying colorectal cancer overall survival. Leveraging two cohorts of 3703 patients, we first perform a genome-wide survival association analysis to develop eight candidate PPSs. Further using an independent cohort with 470 patients, we identify the 287 variants-derived PPS ( i.e ., PPS 287 ) achieving an optimal prediction performance [hazard ratio (HR) per SD = 1.99, P = 1.76 × 10 −8 ], accompanied by additional tests in two external cohorts, with HRs per SD of 1.90 ( P = 3.21 × 10 −14 ; 543 patients) and 1.80 ( P = 1.11 × 10 −9 ; 713 patients). Notably, the detrimental impact of pathologic characteristics and genetic risk could be attenuated by a healthy lifestyle, yielding a 7.62% improvement in the 5-year overall survival rate. Therefore, our findings demonstrate the integrated contribution of pathologic characteristics, germline variants, and lifestyle exposure to the prognosis of colorectal cancer patients.