Polygenic risk scores for the prediction of common cancers in East Asians: A population-based prospective cohort study

Background

To evaluate the utility of polygenic risk scores (PRS) in identifying high-risk individuals, different publicly available PRS for breast (n=65), prostate (n=26), colorectal (n=12) and lung cancers (n=7) were examined in a prospective study of 21,694 Chinese adults.

Methods

We constructed PRS using weights curated in the online PGS Catalog. PRS performance was evaluated by distribution, discrimination, predictive ability, and calibration. Hazard ratios (HR) and corresponding confidence intervals [CI] of the common cancers after 20 years of follow-up were estimated using Cox proportional hazard models for different levels of PRS.

Results

A total of 495 breast, 308 prostate, 332 female-colorectal, 409 male-colorectal, 181 female-lung and 381 male-lung incident cancers were identified. The area under receiver operating characteristic curve for the best performing site-specific PRS were 0.61 (PGS000004, breast), 0.66 (PGS00586, prostate), 0.58 (PGS000148, female-colorectal), 0.60 (PGS000734, male-colorectal) and 0.55 (PGS000740, female-lung), and 0.55 (PGS000392, male-lung), respectively. Compared to the middle quintile, individuals in the highest PRS quintile were 67% more likely to develop cancers of the breast, prostate, and colorectal. For lung cancer, the lowest PRS quintile was associated with 31-45% decreased risk compared to the middle quintile. In contrast, the hazard ratios observed for quintiles 4 (female-lung: 0.91 [0.58-1.44]; male-lung: 1.01 [0.74-1.38]) and 5 (female-lung: 1.00 [0.64-1.56]; male-lung: 1.07 [0.79-1.45]) were not significantly different from that for the middle quintile.

Conclusions

Site-specific PRSs can stratify the risk of developing breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers in this East Asian population. Appropriate correction factors may be required to improve calibration.

Funding

This work is supported by the National Research Foundation Singapore (NRF-NRFF2017-02), PRECISION Health Research, Singapore (PRECISE) and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). WP Koh was supported by National Medical Research Council, Singapore (NMRC/CSA/0055/2013). CC Khor was supported by National Research Foundation Singapore (NRF-NRFI2018-01). Rajkumar Dorajoo received a grant from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research Career Development Award (A*STAR CDA - 202D8090), and from Ministry of Health Healthy Longevity Catalyst Award (HLCA20Jan-0022).

The Singapore Chinese Health Study was supported by grants from the National Medical Research Council, Singapore (NMRC/CIRG/1456/2016) and the U.S. National Institutes of Health [NIH] (R01 CA144034 and UM1 CA182876).