Performance of polygenic risk scores for cancer prediction in a racially diverse academic biobank
Louise Wang, Heena Desai, Shefali S. Verma, Anh N. Le, Ryan Hausler, Anurag Verma, Renae Judy, Abigail Doucette, Peter Gabriel, Goncalo Abecasis, Xiaodong Bai, Suganthi Balasubramanian, Aris Baras, Andrew Blumenfeld, Boris Boutkov, Michael Cantor, Giovanni Coppola, Aris Economides, Gisu Eom, Lukas Habegger, Alicia Hawes, Marcus B. Jones, Shareef Khalid, Olga Krasheninina, Rouel Lanche, Luca A. Lotta, Adam J. Mansfield, Evan K. Maxwell, Jason Mighty, Lyndon J. Mitnaul, Mrunali Nafde, Sean O’Keeffe, Max Orelus, John D. Overton, Razvan Panea, Tommy Polanco, Ayesha Rasool, Jeffrey G. Reid, William Salerno, Jeffrey C. Staples, Alan Shuldiner, Christina Beechert, Caitlin Forsythe, Erin D. Fuller, Zhenhua Gu, Michael Lattari, Alexander Lopez, Kia Manoochehri, John D. Overton, Manasi Pradhan, Thomas D. Schleicher, Maria Sotiropoulos Padilla, Ricardo H. Ulloa, Louis Widom, Sarah E. Wolf, Katherine L. Nathanson, Scott M. Damrauer, Danielle L. Mowery, Marylyn D. Ritchie, Rachel L. Kember, Kara N. Maxwell
Abstract
PURPOSE: Genome-wide association studies have identified hundreds of single nucleotide variations (formerly single nucleotide polymorphisms) associated with several cancers, but the predictive ability of polygenic risk scores (PRSs) is unclear, especially among non-Whites. METHODS: PRSs were derived from genome-wide significant single-nucleotide variations for 15 cancers in 20,079 individuals in an academic biobank. We evaluated the improvement in discriminatory accuracy by including cancer-specific PRS in patients of genetically-determined African and European ancestry. RESULTS: Among the individuals of European genetic ancestry, PRSs for breast, colon, melanoma, and prostate were significantly associated with their respective cancers. Among the individuals of African genetic ancestry, PRSs for breast, colon, prostate, and thyroid were significantly associated with their respective cancers. The area under the curve of the model consisting of age, sex, and principal components was 0.621 to 0.710, and it increased by 1% to 4% with the inclusion of PRS in individuals of European genetic ancestry. In individuals of African genetic ancestry, area under the curve was overall higher in the model without the PRS (0.723-0.810) but increased by <1% with the inclusion of PRS for most cancers. CONCLUSION: PRS moderately increased the ability to discriminate the cancer status in individuals of European but not African ancestry. Further large-scale studies are needed to identify ancestry-specific genetic factors in non-White populations to incorporate PRS into cancer risk assessment.