Genome-wide association study identifies multiple susceptibility loci for pancreatic cancer

Rachael Stolzenberg-Solomon, Laufey Amundadottir and colleagues report a genome-wide association study of pancreatic cancer. They identify four new susceptibility loci. We performed a multistage genome-wide association study including 7,683 individuals with pancreatic cancer and 14,397 controls of European descent. Four new loci reached genome-wide significance: rs6971499 at 7q32.3 ( LINC-PINT , per-allele odds ratio (OR) = 0.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.74–0.84, P = 3.0 × 10 −12 ), rs7190458 at 16q23.1 ( BCAR1/CTRB1/CTRB2 , OR = 1.46, 95% CI 1.30–1.65, P = 1.1 × 10 −10 ), rs9581943 at 13q12.2 ( PDX1 , OR = 1.15, 95% CI 1.10–1.20, P = 2.4 × 10 −9 ) and rs16986825 at 22q12.1 ( ZNRF3 , OR = 1.18, 95% CI 1.12–1.25, P = 1.2 × 10 −8 ). We identified an independent signal in exon 2 of TERT at the established region 5p15.33 (rs2736098, OR = 0.80, 95% CI 0.76–0.85, P = 9.8 × 10 −14 ). We also identified a locus at 8q24.21 (rs1561927, P = 1.3 × 10 −7 ) that approached genome-wide significance located 455 kb telomeric of PVT1 . Our study identified multiple new susceptibility alleles for pancreatic cancer that are worthy of follow-up studies.