This GWAS of HCC relied on existing biological and data resources from 7 USA sites and one Canadian site which allows for the integration of genetic and environmental data. Total of 2199 case patients and 1103 non cancer controls were genotyped. Case patients are defined as patients with pathological or radiological diagnosis of HCC with and without chronic hepatitis C virus infection. Study was restricted to Caucasian population without prior infection with chronic HBV infection. All DNA samples were extracted from peripheral blood. Study population of the participated sites are: Site-1: University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center A hospital based-case-control study was initiated at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2000 and approved by the Institutional Review Board of The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Study design was previously described in detailed (1-3). Written informed consent for an interview and for a biological sample was obtained from each participant. At time of diagnosis prior to treatment exposure. Case patients were recruited from the population of patients with newly diagnosed HCC who were evaluated and treated at the institution's gastrointestinal medical and surgical oncology outpatient clinics. Inclusion criteria were as follows: a pathologically confirmed diagnosis of HCC, U.S. residency, and the ability to communicate in English. Patients with concurrent or past history of other types of cancers were excluded. Control subjects were healthy spouses of patients with cancers other than liver, gastrointestinal, lung, or head and neck (smoking-related cancers) undergoing treatment at our institution. Eligibility criteria for control subjects were the same as those for patients, except that control subjects could not have ever had cancer. A short, structured questionnaire was used to screen potential control subjects on the basis of eligibility criteria. Control subjects and patients were recruited simultaneously. Case patients and control subjects were interviewed by well-trained interviewers who followed a written protocol to guide ascertainment and reduce surveillance, interviewer, and recall bias. No proxy interviews were conducted. The interviewers used a structured and validated questionnaire to collect information about demographic characteristics and potential risk factors for HCC such as personal smoking history, alcohol use, medical history, occupational history, and family history of cancer. Blood samples from cases and controls were tested for HBV and HCV. HCV antibodies, hepatitis B surface antigen, and antibodies to hepatitis B core antigen were detected by use of a third-generation enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) (Abbott Laboratories, North Chicago, IL). Important clinical information were retrieved from patients' medical records. Total of 1188 case patients and 278 controls from MD Anderson study were genotyped. Site-2: Mayo Clinic Case patients and controls included in the study from Mayo clinic were recruited as part of Mayo International Hepatobiliary Neoplasia Register and Biorepository. Only USA patients and controls were participated. All cases and controls signed informed consent indicating their willingness to participate in genetic studies. Epidemiological and clinical data were collected from participants and retrieved from medical records. Total of 522 HCC case patients and 182 controls were genotyped in this study. Site-3: Toronto University Molecular Epidemiology of Hepatobiliary Tumors (HBT study, CAPCR 09-0289) is a hospital-based study that includes 1710 patients diagnosed with liver, bile duct or gallbladder adenocarcinoma (Hepatocellular carcinoma - HCC; cholangiocarcinoma - CCA; and gall bladder adenocarcinoma -GBCa) recruited at University Health Network (UHN) between 2009 and 2018. HBT study is a prospective study of cancer patients that collects self-reported demographic and epidemiological data, medical records/clinical information and blood samples for research purposes. Eligible patients recruited between 2009 and March 15 2016 were selected to participate in the Genome-Wide Association Study in Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma (GWAS in HCC, CAPCR 15-9943-CE), a sub-study of the HBT study. Eligible prospective patients recruited after March 15 2016 signed the Addendum to the HBT consent form and became eligible to participate in the GWAS in HCC study. Total of 271 cases and 21 controls were genotyped from Toronto University Site-4: University of Pittsburgh The design of the study has been described previously (4-6). Briefly, this population-based study enrolled 120 HCC patients and 230 matched controls from black, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic white residents of Los Angeles County who were between 18 and 74 years of age at diagnosis from January 1995 through December 2001. HCC Cases were identified through the Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance Program. We sought to recruit up to two control subjects per case from the neighborhoods where HCC patients resided at the time of diagnosis, who were matched to the index case by sex, age (within 5 years), and race (Hispanic white, non-Hispanic white, black). Blood samples (plasma and buffy coat), medical and lifestyle factors were collected from all consenting participants. Total of 65 cases and 60 controls were genotyped in this study Site-5: South Western Dallas Under IRB approval, HCC Cases and controls were prospectively collected since 2015 from the outpatient Liver clinics from Parkland Health and Hospital System and UT Southwestern Medical Center, two large health systems in Dallas TX. A Total of 31 cases and 29 controls were genotyped from site 5. Site-6: Columbia University HCC patients from Columbia are those recruited as part of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center Database Shared Resource which seeks to recruit all cancer patients for potential future studies. The PI is Dr. Katherine Crew AAAL5871. This resource collects sociodemographic, lifestyle and clinical data on patients as well as a blood sample. Those who indicated on their consent form that they would participate in genetic studies were included. Total of 79 case patients with HCC were genotyped from Columbia University. Site-7: University of Michigan The study population included from University of Michigan were included from a prospective study of with chronic HCV infection recruited in Ann Arbor Patients who had under- gone liver transplantation, known coinfection with HIV, life expectancy <12 months due to extra-hepatic illnesses, or were receiving HCV treatment at enrolment, were excluded. Protocol, surveys, and data forms were developed where each enrolled patient completed the same questionnaire All patients provided written informed consent before enrolment in the study. The study was approved by the institutional review board or ethics committee at the University of Michigan. Detailed study description was previously published (7). Total of 44 cases and 347 controls were genotyped Site-8: Veteran Administration Medical Center in Houston This research including written informed consent form was jointly approved by Institutional Review Boards for the Baylor College of Medicine and the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston, Texas. Study details have been previously published (8). Briefly, we prospectively recruited consecutive HCV-infected veterans prior to their previously scheduled HCV clinic visit at a large tertiary care VA medical center between May 1, 2009 and December 31, 2012. Patients completed a research assistant (RA) administered survey interrogating medical and risk factor history including lifetime alcohol use, had anthropometric measurements taken, and completed a fasting venipuncture for performance of the FibroSure-ActiTest as a measure of hepatic pathology. We restricted our current analysis to individuals who were: (1) White male veterans between 18 and 70 years; (2) had no history of HCC, liver transplant, decompensated liver disease including ascites, dementia, or psychosis; (3) were serologically-confirmed to have chronic HCV and to be negative for both HIV and active HBV infection; (4) were not currently receiving anti-HCV pharmacotherapy; and (5) had FibroSURE testing shown F3/F4 fibrosis consistent with cirrhosis.
Pathogenic variants in the snRNA RNU4-2 were recently described as a frequent cause of neurodevelopmental disorders. In our study we further delineate the phenotype associated with RNU4-2 and we also identify pathogenic variants in RNU5A-A and RNU5B-1. Capture-based RNA-Seq were performed to compare splicing pattern between affected and control individuals. A strong signature based on alternative 5' splice site usage was found for RNU4-2 patients, and we suggest an either 5' or 3' signature depending on the variant's localiztion in U5 genes.
eMERGE-PGx is a multi-site test of the concept that sequence information can be coupled to electronic medical records (EMRs) for use in healthcare. The promise of personalized medicine - health care guided by each individual's biological characteristics - is being fostered by increasingly powerful and economical methods to acquire clinically relevant biomarkers from large numbers of people. One therapeutic area that seems especially ripe for an early test of the personalized medicine concept is pharmacogenomics (PGx) - the idea that individual variation in drug response includes a genomic component. Drug response variation is an accepted feature of virtually all drug treatments, and contemporary molecular biologic tools continue to identify key genes mediating drug metabolism, transport, and targets. Importantly, common variation in these genes is an increasingly well-recognized contributor, sometimes with large effects, to variation in drug responses. As a result, recommendations for genotype-guided therapy are increasing. These evidence-based recommendations, if implemented in health care practice, could reduce adverse drug events and improve time to therapeutic response. Through eMERGE-PGx, we are developing strategies for the optimal implementation of genetic sequence data into the clinical environment with the ultimate goal of improving patient care. Site and participants include: Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania (CHOP): The Center for Applied Genomics (CAG) at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is a high-throughput, highly automated genotyping and sequencing facility equipped with state-of-the-art genotyping and sequencing platforms. Children who are treated at the Children's Hospital Healthcare Network and their parents may be eligible to take part in a major initiative to collect more than 100,000 blood samples, covering a wide range of pediatric diseases. The PGx population selected for sequencing with the PGRNseq panel at CHOP is 1,650 children from CAG's biorepository with well-documented drug-related severe adverse events (SAEs) or EHR-based drug response profiles. SAEs were extracted from EPIC records and from CHOP's Adverse Event (AE) database, which documents every AE at CHOP. These AEs are classified by a medical review panel according to the causal relationship with the suspected drug into 'doubtful', 'possible', and 'probable'. Individuals with events classified as probable, severe and objective, were selected for sequencing. The drugs more frequently associated with adverse events are antibiotics, antineoplastics, immunosuppressants and psychotropic drugs. This cohort constitutes 50% of the target population. The remaining subjects were selected using EHR-based algorithms that we have developed and validated at CAG for identifying patients not responding to ADHD medication (primarily atomoxetine) and patients refractory to antiepileptic treatment from responders. Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center/Boston's Children's Hospital (CCHMC/BCH): 811 CCHMC samples were obtained from children, adolescents or young adults exposed to medication or at risk for needing medication of study interest. 55% of participants were exposed to one or more opioids and their DNA source was a CCHMC study-specific biobank; while 27% of participants were at risk for needing an opioid for surgical pain management and were newly recruited. The remainder of the cohort was exposed to methylphenidate and their DNA samples were obtained from a CCHMC study-specific biobank. The focus of Boston Children's Hospital eMERGE PGx project is on individuals with epilepsy. Samples were taken from a current pharmacogenomics study already in place through which DMET analysis was run and used as confirmation for PGRN-Seq results. A total of 109 samples were sent for PGRN-Seq analysis at University of Washington. The remaining 141 epilepsy samples were from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and underwent testing with PGRN-Seq at CHOP. Geisinger Health System: A research cohort of adult Geisinger Clinic patients was enrolled from community-based primary care clinics of the Geisinger Health System. Patients were eligible for enrollment if they were a primary care patient of a Geisinger Clinic physician and were scheduled for a non-emergent clinic visit. All data are from Geisinger patients who consent to participate in the MyCode project. MyCode participants agree to provide biological samples for broad research use, including genomic analysis, and for linking of sample data to information in the participant's Geisinger health record. The consent also permits sharing of de-identified data for research purposes. Group Health(GH)/University of Washington (UW): Potential GH participants for the PGx project were enrolled in the eMERGE Network through the Northwest Institute of Genetic Medicine (NWIGM) biorepository, and provided the appropriate consent to receive clinically relevant genetic results (N~6300). Participants were eligible if aged 50 - 65 years old at the time of their enrollment into the NWIGM repository, living, enrolled in GH's integrated group practice, and had completed an online Health Risk Appraisal. The selection algorithm was based on several data sources from the EHR at Group Health: 1. Demographics - participants with self-reported race as Asian or African ancestry were prioritized and selected to enrich for non-European ancestry; 2. Diagnosis and procedure codes - participants were selected if found to have a history of hypertension, atrial fibrillation (AF,) or congestive heart failure (CHF). Participants with a history of arrhythmia were added if the entire selection algorithm did not generate 900 individuals. We also enriched for participants with EHR evidence of actionable indications related to PGRNSeq genes. Participants were selected if found to have an ICD9 code for malignant hyperthermia, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure or long QT syndrome (LQTS); 3. Laboratory values - if a participant had any laboratory event of creatine kinase (CK) > 1000, and were dispensed statins within 6 months of the event, then they were selected; and 4. Medications - participants were excluded if ever on carbamazepine or had a current regimen of warfarin. Essentia Institute of Rural Health, Marshfield Clinic, Pennsylvania State University (Marshfield): For this study, 750 subjects were selected and enrolled into PGx based on Vanderbilt's algorithm designed to enrich for patients who are most likely to receive one of three common drugs (Clopidogrel, Warfarin or Simvastatin) in the next 2-3 years. These patients were sent a letter of invitation and description of the PGx project. Follow-up phone calls were made, and interested subjects came in for a one time meeting to discuss the project and go through the informed consent with the research coordinator. If they were interested they signed the consent and HIPAA forms and gave blood. Subjects were chosen and enrolled into PGx independently of previous biobank participation. Mayo Clinic: The Right Drug, Right Dose, Right Time - Using Genomic Data to Individualize Treatment (The RIGHT Protocol) enrolled 1013 patients to test the hypothesis that prescribers could deliver genome-guided drug therapy at the point-of-care by using pharmacogenomic data preemptively integrated in the electronic medical record. Complete details regarding the study population have been previously described (Bielinski et al., 2014). Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai School (Mt Sinai): Our study site is the Primary Care Associates (PCA) practice group of the Mount Sinai Faculty Practice Associates (FPA) of the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. This practice has 12 physician providers. All patient encounters are documented and managed with EpicCare ambulatory electronic medical record. Active PCA Patients eligible for enrollment fulfilled the following criteria: a) age 50 or older receiving clinical care at Mount Sinai FPA PCA practice with at least one practice encounter within 18 months prior to commencement of enrollment; b) no history or current use of clopidogrel, warfarin, or simvastatin. Eligible patients were invited to participate through de novo recruitment by letter sent by their provider. Interested patients were screened for eligibility and enrolled to participate in the eMERGE PGX study on site by a dedicated research coordinator. In addition to de novo enrollment from clinical practice, patients of FPA PCA who had previously enrolled in Mount Sinai's BioMe Biobank program AND fulfilled eligibility criteria as stated under a) and b) were identified by chart review and samples sequenced at CIDR using PGRNseq platform (N=300). PGRNseq data from 291 samples passed stringent quality control and are included in the current data set. Furthermore, 56 of these patients carrying known and validated 'actionable' variants affecting prescribing of clopidogrel, warfarin, and/or simvastatin were enrolled in the eMERGE PGX study following invitation through recontacting by the Principal Investigator of the BioMe Program. Northwestern University: Participants for this study were recruited from the General Internal Medicine (GIM) clinic at Northwestern Medical Group (NMG). Patients were selected for invitation to participate if they had been seen a minimum of two times over the last four years, having a high likelihood to receive a prescription for warfarin, Plavix, or a statin, and are seeing a physician who has agreed to allow their patients to be contacted for the study. We utilized an algorithm developed at Vanderbilt and tailored to our population which uses our EHR to estimate the probability that individuals will receive a prescription for warfarin, Plavix, or a statin in the next three years. Participants were sent a letter explaining the study prior to their GIM appointment and offered participation at the time of their visit. Participants were consented on-site and blood drawn after consent was obtained. The GIM clinic consists of 39 primary care physicians who provide approximately 80,000 patient encounters per year. As with any large primary care clinic, a significant proportion of patients in GIM clinic suffer from a variety of chronic health conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, and coronary artery disease. Over 50,000 individuals have been seen by GIM doctors in the past 5 years; 11,562 of these patients have evidence of a statin prescription in the EHR, 3,436 have evidence of a warfarin prescription, and 1,872 have evidence of a Plavix prescription. Vanderbilt University: The more than 1000 participants enrolled into Vanderbilt's eMERGE PGx study were newly recruited from the Cardiology and Internal Medicine Clinics and the Hillsboro Medical Group within Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). Patients were selected based on a predictive algorithm estimating the patient's likelihood of receiving Clopidogrel, Warfarin, and/or Simvastatin. The algorithm identifies primarily older middle-aged patients, and the mean age of the study group is 74. The cohort is approximately 45% female with 75% of subjects self-identified as EA and 24% as AA. Subjects were consented in person by study personnel following a routine clinic visit and an introduction to the study staff by their doctor. VUMC is a comprehensive health care facility dedicated to patient care, research, and the education of health care professionals. Translational research into the causes and treatment of disease as well as studying fundamental biological properties is the primary focus of discovery at Vanderbilt. Clinical research is conducted in Vanderbilt University Hospital, the Nashville Veterans Administration Hospital, Meharry General Hospital and in their associated outpatient clinics. These hospitals and clinics, all associated with the Vanderbilt system, each have full time Vanderbilt faculty and medical housestaff and provide clinical care and participate in research programs. The Vanderbilt Clinic is comprised of more than 95 adult outpatient specialty practices and received over 1.5 million ambulatory visits in 2012-13. The Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute offers a comprehensive heart program offering diagnosis, medical treatment, minimally invasive therapies, surgical intervention and disease management, tailored to each individual's unique needs. All programs within the Vanderbilt Clinic have survival figures that surpass the national average.
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Original description of the study: From ELLIPSE (linked to the PRACTICAL consortium), we contributed ~78,000 SNPs to the OncoArray. A large fraction of the content was derived from the GWAS meta-analyses in European ancestry populations (overall and aggressive disease; ~27K SNPs). We also selected just over 10,000 SNPs from the meta-analyses in the non-European populations, with a majority of these SNPs coming from the analysis of overall prostate cancer in African ancestry populations as well as from the multiethnic meta-analysis. A substantial fraction of SNPs (~28,000) were also selected for fine-mapping of 53 loci not included in the common fine-mapping regions (tagging at r2>0.9 across ±500kb regions). We also selected a few thousand SNPs related with PSA levels and/or disease survival as well as SNPs from candidate lists provided by study collaborators, as well as from meta-analyses of exome SNP chip data from the Multiethnic Cohort and UK studies. The Contributing Studies: Aarhus: Hospital-based, Retrospective, Observational. Source of cases: Patients treated for prostate adenocarcinoma at Department of Urology, Aarhus University Hospital, Skejby (Aarhus, Denmark). Source of controls: Age-matched males treated for myocardial infarction or undergoing coronary angioplasty, but with no prostate cancer diagnosis based on information retrieved from the Danish Cancer Register and the Danish Cause of Death Register. AHS: Nested case-control study within prospective cohort. Source of cases: linkage to cancer registries in study states. Source of controls: matched controls from cohort ATBC: Prospective, nested case-control. Source of cases: Finnish male smokers aged 50-69 years at baseline. Source of controls: Finnish male smokers aged 50-69 years at baseline BioVu: Cases identified in a biobank linked to electronic health records. Source of cases: A total of 214 cases were identified in the VUMC de-identified electronic health records database (the Synthetic Derivative) and shipped to USC for genotyping in April 2014. The following criteria were used to identify cases: Age 18 or greater; male; African Americans (Black) only. Note that African ancestry is not self-identified, it is administratively or third-party assigned (which has been shown to be highly correlated with genetic ancestry for African Americans in BioVU; see references). Source of controls: Controls were identified in the de-identified electronic health record. Unfortunately, they were not age matched to the cases, and therefore cannot be used for this study. Canary PASS: Prospective, Multi-site, Observational Active Surveillance Study. Source of cases: clinic based from Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center, Eastern Virginia Medical School, University of California at San Francisco, University of Texas Health Sciences Center San Antonio, University of Washington, VA Puget Sound. Source of controls: N/A CCI: Case series, Hospital-based. Source of cases: Cases identified through clinics at the Cross Cancer Institute. Source of controls: N/A CerePP French Prostate Cancer Case-Control Study (ProGene): Case-Control, Prospective, Observational, Hospital-based. Source of cases: Patients, treated in French departments of Urology, who had histologically confirmed prostate cancer. Source of controls: Controls were recruited as participating in a systematic health screening program and found unaffected (normal digital rectal examination and total PSA < 4 ng/ml, or negative biopsy if PSA > 4 ng/ml). COH: hospital-based cases and controls from outside. Source of cases: Consented prostate cancer cases at City of Hope. Source of controls: Consented unaffected males that were part of other studies where they consented to have their DNA used for other research studies. COSM: Population-based cohort. Source of cases: General population. Source of controls: General population CPCS1: Case-control - Denmark. Source of cases: Hospital referrals. Source of controls: Copenhagen General Population Study CPCS2: Source of cases: Hospital referrals. Source of controls: Copenhagen General Population Study CPDR: Retrospective cohort. Source of cases: Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Source of controls: Walter Reed National Military Medical Center ACS_CPS-II: Nested case-control derived from a prospective cohort study. Source of cases: Identified through self-report on follow-up questionnaires and verified through medical records or cancer registries, identified through cancer registries or the National Death Index (with prostate cancer as the primary cause of death). Source of controls: Cohort participants who were cancer-free at the time of diagnosis of the matched case, also matched on age (±6 mo) and date of biospecimen donation (±6 mo). EPIC: Case-control - Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, UK. Source of cases: Identified through record linkage with population-based cancer registries in Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and UK. In Germany and Greece, follow-up is active and achieved through checks of insurance records and cancer and pathology registries as well as via self-reported questionnaires; self-reported incident cancers are verified through medical records. Source of controls: Cohort participants without a diagnosis of cancer EPICAP: Case-control, Population-based, ages less than 75 years at diagnosis, Hérault, France. Source of cases: Prostate cancer cases in all public hospitals and private urology clinics of département of Hérault in France. Cases validation by the Hérault Cancer Registry. Source of controls: Population-based controls, frequency age matched (5-year groups). Quotas by socio-economic status (SES) in order to obtain a distribution by SES among controls identical to the SES distribution among general population men, conditionally to age. ERSPC: Population-based randomized trial. Source of cases: Men with PrCa from screening arm ERSPC Rotterdam. Source of controls: Men without PrCa from screening arm ERSPC Rotterdam ESTHER: Case-control, Prospective, Observational, Population-based. Source of cases: Prostate cancer cases in all hospitals in the state of Saarland, from 2001-2003. Source of controls: Random sample of participants from routine health check-up in Saarland, in 2000-2002 FHCRC: Population-based, case-control, ages 35-74 years at diagnosis, King County, WA, USA. Source of cases: Identified through the Seattle-Puget Sound SEER cancer registry. Source of controls: Randomly selected, age-frequency matched residents from the same county as cases Gene-PARE: Hospital-based. Source of cases: Patients that received radiotherapy for treatment of prostate cancer. Source of controls: n/a Hamburg-Zagreb: Hospital-based, Prospective. Source of cases: Prostate cancer cases seen at the Department of Oncology, University Hospital Center Zagreb, Croatia. Source of controls: Population-based (Croatia), healthy men, older than 50, with no medical record of cancer, and no family history of cancer (1st & 2nd degree relatives) HPFS: Nested case-control. Source of cases: Participants of the HPFS cohort. Source of controls: Participants of the HPFS cohort IMPACT: Observational. Source of cases: Carriers and non-carriers (with a known mutation in the family) of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, aged between 40 and 69, who are undergoing prostate screening with annual PSA testing. This cohort has been diagnosed with prostate cancer during the study. Source of controls: Carriers and non-carriers (with a known mutation in the family) of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, aged between 40 and 69, who are undergoing prostate screening with annual PSA testing. This cohort has not been diagnosed with prostate cancer during the study. IPO-Porto: Hospital-based. Source of cases: Early onset and/or familial prostate cancer. Source of controls: Blood donors Karuprostate: Case-control, Retrospective, Population-based. Source of cases: From FWI (Guadeloupe): 237 consecutive incident patients with histologically confirmed prostate cancer attending public and private urology clinics; From Democratic Republic of Congo: 148 consecutive incident patients with histologically confirmed prostate cancer attending the University Clinic of Kinshasa. Source of controls: From FWI (Guadeloupe): 277 controls recruited from men participating in a free systematic health screening program open to the general population; From Democratic Republic of Congo: 134 controls recruited from subjects attending the University Clinic of Kinshasa KULEUVEN: Hospital-based, Prospective, Observational. Source of cases: Prostate cancer cases recruited at the University Hospital Leuven. Source of controls: Healthy males with no history of prostate cancer recruited at the University Hospitals, Leuven. LAAPC: Subjects were participants in a population-based case-control study of aggressive prostate cancer conducted in Los Angeles County. Cases were identified through the Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance Program rapid case ascertainment system. Eligible cases included African American, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White men diagnosed with a first primary prostate cancer between January 1, 1999 and December 31, 2003. Eligible cases also had (a) prostatectomy with documented tumor extension outside the prostate, (b) metastatic prostate cancer in sites other than prostate, (c) needle biopsy of the prostate with Gleason grade ≥8, or (d) needle biopsy with Gleason grade 7 and tumor in more than two thirds of the biopsy cores. Eligible controls were men never diagnosed with prostate cancer, living in the same neighborhood as a case, and were frequency matched to cases on age (± 5 y) and race/ethnicity. Controls were identified by a neighborhood walk algorithm, which proceeds through an obligatory sequence of adjacent houses or residential units beginning at a specific residence that has a specific geographic relationship to the residence where the case lived at diagnosis. Malaysia: Case-control. Source of cases: Patients attended the outpatient urology or uro-onco clinic at University Malaya Medical Center. Source of controls: Population-based, age matched (5-year groups), ascertained through electoral register, Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia MCC-Spain: Case-control. Source of cases: Identified through the urology departments of the participating hospitals. Source of controls: Population-based, frequency age and region matched, ascertained through the rosters of the primary health care centers MCCS: Nested case-control, Melbourne, Victoria. Source of cases: Identified by linkage to the Victorian Cancer Registry. Source of controls: Cohort participants without a diagnosis of cancer MD Anderson: Participants in this study were identified from epidemiological prostate cancer studies conducted at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in the Houston Metropolitan area. Cases were accrued in the Houston Medical Center and were not restricted with respect to Gleason score, stage or PSA. Controls were identified via random-digit-dialing or among hospital visitors and they were frequency matched to cases on age and race. Lifestyle, demographic, and family history data were collected using a standardized questionnaire. MDACC_AS: A prospective cohort study. Source of cases: Men with clinically organ-confined prostate cancer meeting eligibility criteria for a prospective cohort study of active surveillance at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Source of controls: N/A MEC: The Multiethnic Cohort (MEC) is comprised of over 215,000 men and women recruited from Hawaii and the Los Angeles area between 1993 and 1996. Between 1995 and 2006, over 65,000 blood samples were collected from participants for genetic analyses. To identify incident cancer cases, the MEC was cross-linked with the population-based Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) registries in California and Hawaii, and unaffected cohort participants with blood samples were selected as controls MIAMI (WFPCS): Prostate cancer cases and controls were recruited from the Departments of Urology and Internal Medicine of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine using sequential patient populations as described previously (PMID:15342424). All study subjects received a detailed description of the study protocol and signed their informed consent, as approved by the medical center's Institutional Review Board. The general eligibility criteria were (i) able to comprehend informed consent and (ii) without previously diagnosed cancer. The exclusion criteria were (i) clinical diagnosis of autoimmune diseases; (ii) chronic inflammatory conditions; and (iii) infections within the past 6 weeks. Blood samples were collected from all subjects. MOFFITT: Hospital-based. Source of cases: clinic based from Moffitt Cancer Center. Source of controls: Moffitt Cancer Center affiliated Lifetime cancer screening center NMHS: Case-control, clinic based, Nashville TN. Source of cases: All urology clinics in Nashville, TN. Source of controls: Men without prostate cancer at prostate biopsy. PCaP: The North Carolina-Louisiana Prostate Cancer Project (PCaP) is a multidisciplinary population-based case-only study designed to address racial differences in prostate cancer through a comprehensive evaluation of social, individual and tumor level influences on prostate cancer aggressiveness. PCaP enrolled approximately equal numbers of African Americans and Caucasian Americans with newly-diagnosed prostate cancer from North Carolina (42 counties) and Louisiana (30 parishes) identified through state tumor registries. African American PCaP subjects with DNA, who agreed to future use of specimens for research, participated in OncoArray analysis. PCMUS: Case-control - Sofia, Bulgaria. Source of cases: Patients of Clinic of Urology, Alexandrovska University Hospital, Sofia, Bulgaria, PrCa histopathologically confirmed. Source of controls: 72 patients with verified BPH and PSA<3,5; 78 healthy controls from the MMC Biobank, no history of PrCa PHS: Nested case-control. Source of cases: Participants of the PHS1 trial/cohort. Source of controls: Participants of the PHS1 trial/cohort PLCO: Nested case-control. Source of cases: Men with a confirmed diagnosis of prostate cancer from the PLCO Cancer Screening Trial. Source of controls: Controls were men enrolled in the PLCO Cancer Screening Trial without a diagnosis of cancer at the time of case ascertainment. Poland: Case-control. Source of cases: men with unselected prostate cancer, diagnosed in north-western Poland at the University Hospital in Szczecin. Source of controls: cancer-free men from the same population, taken from the healthy adult patients of family doctors in the Szczecin region PROCAP: Population-based, Retrospective, Observational. Source of cases: Cases were ascertained from the National Prostate Cancer Register of Sweden Follow-Up Study, a retrospective nationwide cohort study of patients with localized prostate cancer. Source of controls: Controls were selected among men referred for PSA testing in laboratories in Stockholm County, Sweden, between 2010 and 2012. PROGReSS: Hospital-based, Prospective, Observational. Source of cases: Prostate cancer cases from the Hospital Clínico Universitario de Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. Source of controls: Cancer-free men from the same population ProMPT: A study to collect samples and data from subjects with and without prostate cancer. Retrospective, Experimental. Source of cases: Subjects attending outpatient clinics in hospitals. Source of controls: Subjects attending outpatient clinics in hospitals ProtecT: Trial of treatment. Samples taken from subjects invited for PSA testing from the community at nine centers across United Kingdom. Source of cases: Subjects who have a proven diagnosis of prostate cancer following testing. Source of controls: Identified through invitation of subjects in the community. PROtEuS: Case-control, population-based. Source of cases: All new histologically-confirmed cases, aged less or equal to 75 years, diagnosed between 2005 and 2009, actively ascertained across Montreal French hospitals. Source of controls: Randomly selected from the Provincial electoral list of French-speaking men between 2005 and 2009, from the same area of residence as cases and frequency-matched on age. QLD: Case-control. Source of cases: A longitudinal cohort study (Prostate Cancer Supportive Care and Patient Outcomes Project: ProsCan) conducted in Queensland, through which men newly diagnosed with prostate cancer from 26 private practices and 10 public hospitals were directly referred to ProsCan at the time of diagnosis by their treating clinician (age range 43-88 years). All cases had histopathologically confirmed prostate cancer, following presentation with an abnormal serum PSA and/or lower urinary tract symptoms. Source of controls: Controls comprised healthy male blood donors with no personal history of prostate cancer, recruited through (i) the Australian Red Cross Blood Services in Brisbane (age range 19-76 years) and (ii) the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) (age and post-code/ area matched to ProsCan, age range 54-90 years). RAPPER: Multi-centre, hospital based blood sample collection study in patients enrolled in clinical trials with prospective collection of radiotherapy toxicity data. Source of cases: Prostate cancer patients enrolled in radiotherapy trials: CHHiP, RT01, Dose Escalation, RADICALS, Pelvic IMRT, PIVOTAL. Source of controls: N/A SABOR: Prostate Cancer Screening Cohort. Source of cases: Men >45 yrs of age participating in annual PSA screening. Source of controls: Males participating in annual PSA prostate cancer risk evaluations (funded by NCI biomarkers discovery and validation grant), recruited through University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and affiliated sites or through study advertisements, enrolment open to the community SCCS: Case-control in cohort, Southeastern USA. Prospective, Observational, Population-based. Source of cases: SCCS entry population. Source of controls: SCCS entry population SCPCS: Population-based, Retrospective, Observational. Source of cases: South Carolina Central Cancer Registry. Source of controls: Health Care Financing Administration beneficiary file SEARCH: Case-control - East Anglia, UK. Source of cases: Men < 70 years of age registered with prostate cancer at the population-based cancer registry, Eastern Cancer Registration and Information Centre, East Anglia, UK. Source of controls: Men attending general practice in East Anglia with no known prostate cancer diagnosis, frequency matched to cases by age and geographic region SNP_Prostate_Ghent: Hospital-based, Retrospective, Observational. Source of cases: Men treated with IMRT as primary or postoperative treatment for prostate cancer at the Ghent University Hospital between 2000 and 2010. Source of controls: Employees of the University hospital and members of social activity clubs, without a history of any cancer. SPAG: Hospital-based, Retrospective, Observational. Source of cases: Guernsey. Source of controls: Guernsey STHM2: Population-based, Retrospective, Observational. Source of cases: Cases were selected among men referred for PSA testing in laboratories in Stockholm County, Sweden, between 2010 and 2012. Source of controls: Controls were selected among men referred for PSA testing in laboratories in Stockholm County, Sweden, between 2010 and 2012. PCPT: Case-control from a randomized clinical trial. Source of cases: Randomized clinical trial. Source of controls: Randomized clinical trial SELECT: Case-cohort from a randomized clinical trial. Source of cases: Randomized clinical trial. Source of controls: Randomized clinical trial TAMPERE: Case-control - Finland, Retrospective, Observational, Population-based. Source of cases: Identified through linkage to the Finnish Cancer Registry and patient records; and the Finnish arm of the ERSPC study. Source of controls: Cohort participants without a diagnosis of cancer UGANDA: Uganda Prostate Cancer Study: Uganda is a case-control study of prostate cancer in Kampala Uganda that was initiated in 2011. Men with prostate cancer were enrolled from the Urology unit at Mulago Hospital and men without prostate cancer (i.e. controls) were enrolled from other clinics (i.e. surgery) at the hospital. UKGPCS: ICR, UK. Source of cases: Cases identified through clinics at the Royal Marsden hospital and nationwide NCRN hospitals. Source of controls: Ken Muir's control- 2000 ULM: Case-control - Germany. Source of cases: familial cases (n=162): identified through questionnaires for family history by collaborating urologists all over Germany; sporadic cases (n=308): prostatectomy series performed in the Clinic of Urology Ulm between 2012 and 2014. Source of controls: age-matched controls (n=188): age-matched men without prostate cancer and negative family history collected in hospitals of Ulm WUGS/WUPCS: Cases Series, USA. Source of cases: Identified through clinics at Washington University in St. Louis. Source of controls: Men diagnosed and managed with prostate cancer in University based clinic. Acknowledgement Statements: Aarhus: This study was supported by the Danish Strategic Research Council (now Innovation Fund Denmark) and the Danish Cancer Society. The Danish Cancer Biobank (DCB) is acknowledged for biological material. AHS: This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, National Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (Z01CP010119). ATBC: This research was supported in part by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH and the National Cancer Institute. Additionally, this research was supported by U.S. Public Health Service contracts N01-CN-45165, N01-RC-45035, N01-RC-37004, HHSN261201000006C, and HHSN261201500005C from the National Cancer Institute, Department of Health and Human Services. BioVu: The dataset(s) used for the analyses described were obtained from Vanderbilt University Medical Center's BioVU which is supported by institutional funding and by the National Center for Research Resources, Grant UL1 RR024975-01 (which is now at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Grant 2 UL1 TR000445-06). Canary PASS: PASS was supported by Canary Foundation and the National Cancer Institute's Early Detection Research Network (U01 CA086402) CCI: This work was awarded by Prostate Cancer Canada and is proudly funded by the Movember Foundation - Grant # D2013-36.The CCI group would like to thank David Murray, Razmik Mirzayans, and April Scott for their contribution to this work. CerePP French Prostate Cancer Case-Control Study (ProGene): None reported COH: SLN is partially supported by the Morris and Horowitz Families Endowed Professorship COSM: The Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Cancer Foundation CPCS1 & CPCS2: Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Herlev and Gentofte Hospital, Copenhagen University Hospital, Herlev Ringvej 75, DK-2730 Herlev, DenmarkCPCS1 would like to thank the participants and staff of the Copenhagen General Population Study for their important contributions. CPDR: Uniformed Services University for the Health Sciences HU0001-10-2-0002 (PI: David G. McLeod, MD) CPS-II: The American Cancer Society funds the creation, maintenance, and updating of the Cancer Prevention Study II cohort. CPS-II thanks the participants and Study Management Group for their invaluable contributions to this research. We would also like to acknowledge the contribution to this study from central cancer registries supported through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Program of Cancer Registries, and cancer registries supported by the National Cancer Institute Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results program. EPIC: The coordination of EPIC is financially supported by the European Commission (DG-SANCO) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The national cohorts are supported by the Danish Cancer Society (Denmark); the Deutsche Krebshilfe, Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum and Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany); the Hellenic Health Foundation, Greek Ministry of Health; Greek Ministry of Education (Greece); the Italian Association for Research on Cancer (AIRC) and National Research Council (Italy); the Dutch Ministry of Public Health, Welfare and Sports (VWS), Netherlands Cancer Registry (NKR), LK Research Funds, Dutch Prevention Funds, Dutch ZON (Zorg Onderzoek Nederland), World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF); the Statistics Netherlands (The Netherlands); the Health Research Fund (FIS), Regional Governments of Andalucía, Asturias, Basque Country, Murcia and Navarra, Spanish Ministry of Health ISCIII RETIC (RD06/0020), Red de Centros RCESP, C03/09 (Spain); the Swedish Cancer Society, Swedish Scientific Council and Regional Government of Skåne and Västerbotten, Fundacion Federico SA (Sweden); the Cancer Research UK, Medical Research Council (United Kingdom). EPICAP: The EPICAP study was supported by grants from Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer, Ligue départementale du Val de Marne; Fondation de France; Agence Nationale de sécurité sanitaire de l'alimentation, de l'environnement et du travail (ANSES). The EPICAP study group would like to thank all urologists, Antoinette Anger and Hasina Randrianasolo (study monitors), Anne-Laure Astolfi, Coline Bernard, Oriane Noyer, Marie-Hélène De Campo, Sandrine Margaroline, Louise N'Diaye, and Sabine Perrier-Bonnet (Clinical Research nurses). ERSPC: This study was supported by the DutchCancerSociety (KWF94-869,98-1657,2002-277,2006-3518, 2010-4800), The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development (ZonMW-002822820, 22000106, 50-50110-98-311, 62300035), The Dutch Cancer Research Foundation (SWOP), and an unconditional grant from Beckman-Coulter-HybritechInc. ESTHER: The ESTHER study was supported by a grant from the Baden Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and Arts. The ESTHER group would like to thank Hartwig Ziegler, Sonja Wolf, Volker Hermann, Heiko Müller, Karina Dieffenbach, Katja Butterbach for valuable contributions to the study. FHCRC: The FHCRC studies were supported by grants R01-CA056678, R01-CA082664, and R01-CA092579 from the US National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, with additional support from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. FHCRC would like to thank all the men who participated in these studies. Gene-PARE: The Gene-PARE study was supported by grants 1R01CA134444 from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, PC074201 and W81XWH-15-1-0680 from the Prostate Cancer Research Program of the Department of Defense and RSGT-05-200-01-CCE from the American Cancer Society. Hamburg-Zagreb: None reported HPFS: The Health Professionals Follow-up Study was supported by grants UM1CA167552, CA133891, CA141298, and P01CA055075. HPFS are grateful to the participants and staff of the Physicians' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study for their valuable contributions, as well as the following state cancer registries for their help: AL, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, NE, NH, NJ, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, and WY. IMPACT: The IMPACT study was funded by The Ronald and Rita McAulay Foundation, CR-UK Project grant (C5047/A1232), Cancer Australia, AICR Netherlands A10-0227, Cancer Australia and Cancer Council Tasmania, NIHR, EU Framework 6, Cancer Councils of Victoria and South Australia, and Philanthropic donation to Northshore University Health System. We acknowledge support from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to the Biomedical Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden Foundation NHS Trust. IMPACT acknowledges the IMPACT study steering committee, collaborating centres, and participants. IPO-Porto: The IPO-Porto study was funded by Fundaçäo para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT; UID/DTP/00776/2013 and PTDC/DTP-PIC/1308/2014) and by IPO-Porto Research Center (CI-IPOP-16-2012 and CI-IPOP-24-2015). MC and MPS are research fellows from Liga Portuguesa Contra o Cancro, Núcleo Regional do Norte. SM is a research fellow from FCT (SFRH/BD/71397/2010). IPO-Porto would like to express our gratitude to all patients and families who have participated in this study. Karuprostate: The Karuprostate study was supported by the the Frech National Health Directorate and by the Association pour la Recherche sur les Tumeurs de la ProstateKarusprostate thanks Séverine Ferdinand. KULEUVEN: F.C. and S.J. are holders of grants from FWO Vlaanderen (G.0684.12N and G.0830.13N), the Belgian federal government (National Cancer Plan KPC_29_023), and a Concerted Research Action of the KU Leuven (GOA/15/017). TVDB is holder of a doctoral fellowship of the FWO. LAAPC: This study was funded by grant R01CA84979 (to S.A. Ingles) from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health. Malaysia: The study was funded by the University Malaya High Impact Research Grant (HIR/MOHE/MED/35). Malaysia thanks all associates in the Urology Unit, University of Malaya, Cancer Research Initiatives Foundation (CARIF) and the Malaysian Men's Health Initiative (MMHI). MCCS: MCCS cohort recruitment was funded by VicHealth and Cancer Council Victoria. The MCCS was further supported by Australian NHMRC grants 209057, 251553, and 504711, and by infrastructure provided by Cancer Council Victoria. Cases and their vital status were ascertained through the Victorian Cancer Registry (VCR) and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), including the National Death Index and the Australian Cancer Database. MCC-Spain: The study was partially funded by the Accion Transversal del Cancer, approved on the Spanish Ministry Council on the 11th October 2007, by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III-FEDER (PI08/1770, PI09/00773-Cantabria, PI11/01889-FEDER, PI12/00265, PI12/01270, and PI12/00715), by the Fundación Marqués de Valdecilla (API 10/09), by the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) Scientific Foundation and by the Catalan Government DURSI grant 2009SGR1489. Samples: Biological samples were stored at the Parc de Salut MAR Biobank (MARBiobanc; Barcelona) which is supported by Instituto de Salud Carlos III FEDER (RD09/0076/00036). Also sample collection was supported by the Xarxa de Bancs de Tumors de Catalunya sponsored by Pla Director d'Oncologia de Catalunya (XBTC). MCC-Spain acknowledges the contribution from Esther Gracia-Lavedan in preparing the data. We thank all the subjects who participated in the study and all MCC-Spain collaborators. MD Anderson: Prostate Cancer Case-Control Studies at MD Anderson (MDA) supported by grants CA68578, ES007784, DAMD W81XWH-07-1-0645, and CA140388. MDACC_AS: None reported MEC: Funding provided by NIH grant U19CA148537 and grant U01CA164973. MIAMI (WFPCS): ACS MOFFITT: The Moffitt group was supported by the US National Cancer Institute (R01CA128813, PI: J.Y. Park). NMHS: Funding for the Nashville Men's Health Study (NMHS) was provided by the National Institutes of Health Grant numbers: RO1CA121060. PCaP only data: The North Carolina - Louisiana Prostate Cancer Project (PCaP) is carried out as a collaborative study supported by the Department of Defense contract DAMD 17-03-2-0052. For HCaP-NC follow-up data: The Health Care Access and Prostate Cancer Treatment in North Carolina (HCaP-NC) study is carried out as a collaborative study supported by the American Cancer Society award RSGT-08-008-01-CPHPS. For studies using both PCaP and HCaP-NC follow-up data please use: The North Carolina - Louisiana Prostate Cancer Project (PCaP) and the Health Care Access and Prostate Cancer Treatment in North Carolina (HCaP-NC) study are carried out as collaborative studies supported by the Department of Defense contract DAMD 17-03-2-0052 and the American Cancer Society award RSGT-08-008-01-CPHPS, respectively. For any PCaP data, please include: The authors thank the staff, advisory committees and research subjects participating in the PCaP study for their important contributions. For studies using PCaP DNA/genotyping data, please include: We would like to acknowledge the UNC BioSpecimen Facility and LSUHSC Pathology Lab for our DNA extractions, blood processing, storage and sample disbursement (https://genome.unc.edu/bsp). For studies using PCaP tissue, please include: We would like to acknowledge the RPCI Department of Urology Tissue Microarray and Immunoanalysis Core for our tissue processing, storage and sample disbursement. For studies using HCaP-NC follow-up data, please use: The Health Care Access and Prostate Cancer Treatment in North Carolina (HCaP-NC) study is carried out as a collaborative study supported by the American Cancer Society award RSGT-08-008-01-CPHPS. The authors thank the staff, advisory committees and research subjects participating in the HCaP-NC study for their important contributions. For studies that use both PCaP and HCaP-NC, please use: The authors thank the staff, advisory committees and research subjects participating in the PCaP and HCaP-NC studies for their important contributions. PCMUS: The PCMUS study was supported by the Bulgarian National Science Fund, Ministry of Education and Science (contract DOO-119/2009; DUNK01/2-2009; DFNI-B01/28/2012) with additional support from the Science Fund of Medical University - Sofia (contract 51/2009; 8I/2009; 28/2010). PHS: The Physicians' Health Study was supported by grants CA34944, CA40360, CA097193, HL26490, and HL34595. PHS members are grateful to the participants and staff of the Physicians' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study for their valuable contributions, as well as the following state cancer registries for their help: AL, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, NE, NH, NJ, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, and WY. PLCO: This PLCO study was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, NIHPLCO thanks Drs. Christine Berg and Philip Prorok, Division of Cancer Prevention at the National Cancer Institute, the screening center investigators and staff of the PLCO Cancer Screening Trial for their contributions to the PLCO Cancer Screening Trial. We thank Mr. Thomas Riley, Mr. Craig Williams, Mr. Matthew Moore, and Ms. Shannon Merkle at Information Management Services, Inc., for their management of the data and Ms. Barbara O'Brien and staff at Westat, Inc. for their contributions to the PLCO Cancer Screening Trial. We also thank the PLCO study participants for their contributions to making this study possible. Poland: None reported PROCAP: PROCAP was supported by the Swedish Cancer Foundation (08-708, 09-0677). PROCAP thanks and acknowledges all of the participants in the PROCAP study. We thank Carin Cavalli-Björkman and Ami Rönnberg Karlsson for their dedicated work in the collection of data. Michael Broms is acknowledged for his skilful work with the databases. KI Biobank is acknowledged for handling the samples and for DNA extraction. We acknowledge The NPCR steering group: Pär Stattin (chair), Anders Widmark, Stefan Karlsson, Magnus Törnblom, Jan Adolfsson, Anna Bill-Axelson, Ove Andrén, David Robinson, Bill Pettersson, Jonas Hugosson, Jan-Erik Damber, Ola Bratt, Göran Ahlgren, Lars Egevad, and Roy Ehrnström. PROGReSS: The PROGReSS study is founded by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Health (INT15/00070; INT16/00154; FIS PI10/00164, FIS PI13/02030; FIS PI16/00046); the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PTA2014-10228-I), and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER 2007-2013). ProMPT: Founded by CRUK, NIHR, MRC, Cambride Biomedical Research Centre ProtecT: Founded by NIHR. ProtecT and ProMPT would like to acknowledge the support of The University of Cambridge, Cancer Research UK. Cancer Research UK grants (C8197/A10123) and (C8197/A10865) supported the genotyping team. We would also like to acknowledge the support of the National Institute for Health Research which funds the Cambridge Bio-medical Research Centre, Cambridge, UK. We would also like to acknowledge the support of the National Cancer Research Prostate Cancer: Mechanisms of Progression and Treatment (PROMPT) collaborative (grant code G0500966/75466) which has funded tissue and urine collections in Cambridge. We are grateful to staff at the Welcome Trust Clinical Research Facility, Addenbrooke's Clinical Research Centre, Cambridge, UK for their help in conducting the ProtecT study. We also acknowledge the support of the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, the DOH HTA (ProtecT grant), and the NCRI/MRC (ProMPT grant) for help with the bio-repository. The UK Department of Health funded the ProtecT study through the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme (projects 96/20/06, 96/20/99). The ProtecT trial and its linked ProMPT and CAP (Comparison Arm for ProtecT) studies are supported by Department of Health, England; Cancer Research UK grant number C522/A8649, Medical Research Council of England grant number G0500966, ID 75466, and The NCRI, UK. The epidemiological data for ProtecT were generated though funding from the Southwest National Health Service Research and Development. DNA extraction in ProtecT was supported by USA Dept of Defense award W81XWH-04-1-0280, Yorkshire Cancer Research and Cancer Research UK. The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of all members of the ProtecT study research group. The views and opinions expressed therein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Health of England. The bio-repository from ProtecT is supported by the NCRI (ProMPT) Prostate Cancer Collaborative and the Cambridge BMRC grant from NIHR. We thank the National Institute for Health Research, Hutchison Whampoa Limited, the Human Research Tissue Bank (Addenbrooke's Hospital), and Cancer Research UK. PROtEuS: PROtEuS was supported financially through grants from the Canadian Cancer Society (13149, 19500, 19864, 19865) and the Cancer Research Society, in partnership with the Ministère de l'enseignement supérieur, de la recherche, de la science et de la technologie du Québec, and the Fonds de la recherche du Québec - Santé.PROtEuS would like to thank its collaborators and research personnel, and the urologists involved in subjects recruitment. We also wish to acknowledge the special contribution made by Ann Hsing and Anand Chokkalingam to the conception of the genetic component of PROtEuS. QLD: The QLD research is supported by The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Australia Project Grants (390130, 1009458) and NHMRC Career Development Fellowship and Cancer Australia PdCCRS funding to J Batra. The QLD team would like to acknowledge and sincerely thank the urologists, pathologists, data managers and patient participants who have generously and altruistically supported the QLD cohort. RAPPER: RAPPER is funded by Cancer Research UK (C1094/A11728; C1094/A18504) and Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre funding (C1467/A7286). The RAPPER group thank Rebecca Elliott for project management. SABOR: The SABOR research is supported by NIH/NCI Early Detection Research Network, grant U01 CA0866402-12. Also supported by the Cancer Center Support Grant to the Cancer Therapy and Research Center from the National Cancer Institute (US) P30 CA054174. SCCS: SCCS is funded by NIH grant R01 CA092447, and SCCS sample preparation was conducted at the Epidemiology Biospecimen Core Lab that is supported in part by the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (P30 CA68485). Data on SCCS cancer cases used in this publication were provided by the Alabama Statewide Cancer Registry; Kentucky Cancer Registry, Lexington, KY; Tennessee Department of Health, Office of Cancer Surveillance; Florida Cancer Data System; North Carolina Central Cancer Registry, North Carolina Division of Public Health; Georgia Comprehensive Cancer Registry; Louisiana Tumor Registry; Mississippi Cancer Registry; South Carolina Central Cancer Registry; Virginia Department of Health, Virginia Cancer Registry; Arkansas Department of Health, Cancer Registry, 4815 W. Markham, Little Rock, AR 72205. The Arkansas Central Cancer Registry is fully funded by a grant from National Program of Cancer Registries, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Data on SCCS cancer cases from Mississippi were collected by the Mississippi Cancer Registry which participates in the National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The contents of this publication are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the CDC or the Mississippi Cancer Registry. SCPCS: SCPCS is funded by CDC grant S1135-19/19, and SCPCS sample preparation was conducted at the Epidemiology Biospecimen Core Lab that is supported in part by the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (P30 CA68485). SEARCH: SEARCH is funded by a program grant from Cancer Research UK (C490/A10124) and supported by the UK National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. SNP_Prostate_Ghent: The study was supported by the National Cancer Plan, financed by the Federal Office of Health and Social Affairs, Belgium. SPAG: Wessex Medical ResearchHope for Guernsey, MUG, HSSD, MSG, Roger Allsopp STHM2: STHM2 was supported by grants from The Strategic Research Programme on Cancer (StratCan), Karolinska Institutet; the Linné Centre for Breast and Prostate Cancer (CRISP, number 70867901), Karolinska Institutet; The Swedish Research Council (number K2010-70X-20430-04-3) and The Swedish Cancer Society (numbers 11-0287 and 11-0624); Stiftelsen Johanna Hagstrand och Sigfrid Linnérs minne; Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS), number 2012-0073STHM2 acknowledges the Karolinska University Laboratory, Aleris Medilab, Unilabs and the Regional Prostate Cancer Registry for performing analyses and help to retrieve data. Carin Cavalli-Björkman and Britt-Marie Hune for their enthusiastic work as research nurses. Astrid Björklund for skilful data management. We wish to thank the BBMRI.se biobank facility at Karolinska Institutet for biobank services. PCPT & SELECT are funded by Public Health Service grants U10CA37429 and 5UM1CA182883 from the National Cancer Institute. SWOG and SELECT thank the site investigators and staff and, most importantly, the participants who donated their time to this trial. TAMPERE: The Tampere (Finland) study was supported by the Academy of Finland (251074), The Finnish Cancer Organisations, Sigrid Juselius Foundation, and the Competitive Research Funding of the Tampere University Hospital (X51003). The PSA screening samples were collected by the Finnish part of ERSPC (European Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer). TAMPERE would like to thank Riina Liikanen, Liisa Maeaettaenen and Kirsi Talala for their work on samples and databases. UGANDA: None reported UKGPCS: UKGPCS would also like to thank the following for funding support: The Institute of Cancer Research and The Everyman Campaign, The Prostate Cancer Research Foundation, Prostate Research Campaign UK (now Prostate Action), The Orchid Cancer Appeal, The National Cancer Research Network UK, The National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) UK. We are grateful for support of NIHR funding to the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. UKGPCS should also like to acknowledge the NCRN nurses, data managers, and consultants for their work in the UKGPCS study. UKGPCS would like to thank all urologists and other persons involved in the planning, coordination, and data collection of the study. ULM: The Ulm group received funds from the German Cancer Aid (Deutsche Krebshilfe). WUGS/WUPCS: WUGS would like to thank the following for funding support: The Anthony DeNovi Fund, the Donald C. McGraw Foundation, and the St. Louis Men's Group Against Cancer.
BAM files from capture-sequencing dataset described in Veilleux et al.
There have been cases of what appear to be nosocomial infections among healthcare workers at several hospitals. The infected healthcare workers were assumed to have contracted the disease through close contact with infected patients. However, we confirmed at each medical institution that there were many healthcare workers who had apparently had closer contact with infected patients than with infected patients, but had not contracted the disease. Thus, the purpose of this study was to clarify the internal factors that make individuals less susceptible to novel coronavirus infection and their stress tolerance, and to establish a system that contributes to the appropriate allocation of healthcare workers and the creation of a system that can more safely deal with this disease in the future.
Glioblastoma is the most common brain tumour. Characterised by a poor prognosis and its recurrence after multimodal treatments, the search for preventable risk factors has been mainly inconclusive up to date. Recently, the data merge from datasetsdeposited at the EGA allowed Aaron Diaz’s team to discover that the glioblastoma cells shift toward a mesenchymal phenotype when the tumour is recurring. Challenges in glioblastoma research As for virtually all cancer types, many efforts have been made to unveil the molecular features responsible of the disease, and several cellular pathways have indeed been identified as being frequently mutated in glioblastoma. Nonetheless, targeted therapies based on identified genes have so far failed to improve outcome, thus survival mostly relies on a standard treatment unchanged since 2005. This is a frustrating situation for both the scientific and medical communities, and above all for the patients, still facing a dreadful path. Some researchers hypothesised that this may be due to the inability to efficiently target cancer stem cells, the originators of the other cell types, thus inducing cancer relapse. In 2019 Charles P. Couturier and colleagues sequenced RNA from single cells of freshly excised glioblastomas of 16 patients, and demonstrated that glioblastoma cells replicate normal brain cell development with a conserved neural cancer cell hierarchy centered around glial progenitor-like cells. In this way, they helped identify the possible target cells to improve efficacy and durability of treatment. Data upcycling at the EGA: the glioblastoma case study Single cell RNA sequencing is generated with a laborious and expensive protocol. The quality of the starting material is crucial (cells sample freshly extracted from the patients) and often several attempts are needed before producing reliable quality sequencing results. Collecting big numbers of patients is also challenging. The sequencing data produced by Kevin Petrecca’s group in Montreal, Canada and deposited at the EGA (EGAS00001004422) was recently upcycled by Lin Wang in San Francisco, California and pooled with their freshly produced ones, and then deposited at the EGA as Dataset EGAS00001004909 The data merge allowed Aaron Diaz’s team to discover that the glioblastoma cells shift toward a mesenchymal phenotype when the tumour is recurring. They profiled 86 primary-recurrent patient-matched paired glioblastoma samples with single-nucleus RNA, among other techniques. These very comprehensive results lead the team to challenge the findings from several other cancer fields where chemotherapy standard chemo-radiation therapy selection pressure at the level of genomic alterations; this is indeed not the case for glioblastoma, where the pressure results in phenotypic transition between cellular states. Several technical controls were made to ensure that the merge of the data was not introducing a bias in the results, and an Inter-table analysis demonstrated nearly equal contribution to overall variance from each of the studies included, indicating that the findings were not due to inter-laboratory technical effect. A novel principal-component analysis showed that the largest contribution to variation in primary glioblastoma neoplastic cells was an axis between MES (mesenchymal) and proneural expression programs. In summary, treating glioblastoma often makes a MES, as commented by Lucy Stead about this remarkable work. Check Aaron Diaz’s team Nature Cancer paper, with strong technical tools, state of the art analysis and data from different sources converging to the same outcomes that made possible a significant step toward a better handling of a frightful cancer. References Couturier, C.P., Ayyadhury, S., Le, P.U. et al. Single-cell RNA-seq reveals that glioblastoma recapitulates a normal neurodevelopmental hierarchy. Nat Commun 11, 3406 (2020). Stead, L.F. Treating glioblastoma often makes a MES. Nat Cancer 3, 1446–1448 (2022). Wang, L., Jung, J., Babikir, H. et al. A single-cell atlas of glioblastoma evolution under therapy reveals cell-intrinsic and cell-extrinsic therapeutic targets. Nat Cancer 3, 1534–1552 (2022). Related links: Kevin Petrecca’s group dataset deposited at the EGA: EGAS00001004422 Lin Wang dataset deposited at the EGA: EGAS00001004909
SCLC - Whole genome sequencing data Publication Peifer et al., 2012, Nature Genetics
Most known genetic variation in human genomes has been called from comparison of short reads to the reference genome, an approach biased against finding complex variation. We sequenced 150 individuals from 50 parent-offspring trios with multiple insert-size libraries to very high coverage. We show that each genome could be independently de novo assembled into a small number of high-quality scaffolds (median N50 > 21 Mb), each of quality comparable to long read assemblies while being very cost-effective. We show that our variant call set from comparing de novo assemblies is far more complete in terms of complex variation than previous studies. Importantly, even the complex 4-5 Mb extended MHC region was assembled and resolved into haplotypes, revealing >700kb novel sequence in this important region of the genome, and major parts of the Y chromosome including some palindromes were assembled with high accuracy. Finally, we show that our variant call-set allows for the genotyping of many more complex variants when used as a reference-panel for imputation into SNP-chip data or into previously resequenced genomes.
RNA-Seq is an effective method to study the transcriptome, but specialized methods are required to identify 5' ends of transcripts. Several published strategies exist for this specific purpose, but their relative merits have not been systematically analyzed. Here, we directly compare the performance of six such methods - testing five with cellular RNA as well as a novel spike-in RNA assay that helps address interpretation challenges that arise from uncertainties in annotation or RNA processing. Using a single human RNA sample, we constructed and sequenced 18 libraries with these methods and one standard, control RNA-Seq library. We find that the CAGE method performed best for mRNA and that most of its unannotated peaks are supported by evidence from other genomic methods. We then applied CAGE to eight brain-related samples and revealed sample-specific transcription start site (TSS) usage as well as a transcriptome-wide shift in TSS usage between fetal and adult brain.
This dataset are the bam files of WGS data from the paper by He et al.
Psoriasis is a common immune-mediate disease identified through scaly patches of the skin. In this study we collected genotype information on 5,067 samples of European ancestry as a follow-up study of our initial GWAS (Nair et al. 2009). We designed an Illumina iSelect custom genotyping array with 2,269 tagging SNPs in the eight known psoriasis susceptibility regions (MHC, IL12B, IL23R, IL23A, TNFAIP3, IL13, RNF114, and TNIP1). The custom array also included 5,463 SNPs outside the eight known susceptibility regions, which were selected based on their association p-values in a meta-analysis of HapMap-imputed genotypes of two published GWAS-CASP (Nair et al. 2009) and (Ellinghaus et al. 2010). After quality control we analyzed 4,806 samples (2,699 cases and 2,107 controls). Please note: The accession number for this dbGaP study was incorrectly listed in the relevant publication (Das et al., 2015, Eur. J. Hum. Genet 23:844-853) as phs000019.v1.p1.
Exome sequence data from microcephalic dwarfism patients with de novo DNMT3A variants
Gastroschisis (MIM 230750) is a herniation of the intestines through a defect of the abdominal wall lateral to the umbilicus (usually on the right side), and it is not covered by a membrane [Ledbetter, 2012]. Gastroschisis is a congenital anomaly with increasing incidence, easy prenatal diagnosis and extremely variable postnatal outcomes. On the basis of clinical manifestations, epidemiologic charateristics, and the presence and type of additional malformations, gastroschisis could be considered a heterogeneous condition with no gene/s discovered yet. This congenital anomaly affects approximately 1-3 infancts per 10,000 live births [Calzolari et al.1995;Parker et al.,2010] Current knowledge about causative mutations/variants. To date, no single gene has been linked to gastroschisis. Some publications have tried to link this malformation to variants in genes (such as AEBP1 (adipocyte enhancer binding protein) gene [Feldkamp et al,. 2012] or the VEGF-NOS3 pathway [Lammer et al., 2008]. Previously, a Scribble mutant mouse model (circletail) was reported to exhibit gastroschisis, however recent studies demonstrated that the Scribble knockout fetus exhibits exomphalos phenotype of gastroschisis [Carnagham et al., 2013]. This data is part of a pre-publication release. For information on the proper use of pre-publication data shared by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (including details of any publication moratoria), please see http://www.sanger.ac.uk/datasharing/
SCLC - RNA sequencing data Publication Peifer et al., 2012, Nature Genetics
The purpose of this study was to identify somatic (tumor-specific) mutations in advanced stage endometrioid endometrial carcinoma tumor exomes. The dataset was generated at the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center (NISC) and NHGRI by next generation sequencing the exomes of 19 de-identified primary tumor DNAs, from advanced stage tumors, and matched non-tumor DNAs.
We report clinical and molecular correlates associated with six de novo EHMT2 variants identified in patients presenting with a Kleefstra syndrome–like phenotype. Transcriptomic profiling of patient-derived fibroblasts and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) reveals shared gene expression signatures between EHMT2 variant carriers and Kleefstra syndrome, compared with cell lines derived from healthy donors.
Previously we performed deep WGS on 6 parents and 13 children from 3 large families from the Scottish Family Health Study to identify de novo mutations. This prelim is cover the additional sequencing of one grandchild from one of these three families. The inclusion of a third generation individual will provide additional experimental validation for the de novo mutations found in the initial trio. As in the previous study, the DNA will be WGS to a depth of approximately 25X to achieve this purpose.These data can only be used for the investigation of the genetic causes of the reported clinical phenotypes in these patients
The focus of this project is to identify genetic variants that are associated with orofacial clefts in African populations in sub-Saharan Africa. Most genetic studies of CLP (including the vast majority of GWAS) have been conducted in populations of European origin with only a few focused on Asian or African populations. We choose to study the genetics of these complex traits in African populations because, African populations have the greatest genetic variation amongst the various populations in the world by virtue of being the primary ancestral population to modern humans (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, 2003; Ramsay et al., 2011). Therefore, the potential for finding novel loci for CLP is quite high. To date 6 genome wide association studies (GWAS) for cleft lip with or without cleft palate (CL/P) have been conducted and 18 risk loci identified (Birnbaum et al., 2009; Grant et al., 2009 ; Beaty et al., 2010; Mangold et al., 2010; Ludwig et al., 2012; Sun et al., 2015). All these studies have either been conducted in European populations, Asian populations or both. There is currently no published GWAS for clefts in African populations. African populations represent a novel and richly productive populations for genetic and environmental exposure studies for CL/P. Investigating the presence of genetic variants in diverse population groups can identify novel variants and candidate genes that are population specific. Environmental factors may also increase the risks in certain population groups due to genetic susceptibility and/or specific exposures. Understanding the role these susceptibility genes play in the effects of environmental risk factors can inform strategies designed towards reducing the outcome of these complex traits, e.g. through the modification of the environmental influences. The study population comprises a large number of individuals (3205 individuals) from Africa (Ghana, Ethiopia and Nigeria). There are cases, case triads (nuclear families), as well as controls with no history of OFC nor other developmental defects.
The majority of human genomic research studies have been conducted in European-ancestry cohorts, reducing the likelihood of detecting potentially novel and globally impactful findings. Here, we present mid-pass whole-genome sequencing data and a genome-wide association study in a cohort of 264 self-reported Malagasy individuals from three locations on the island of Madagascar. We describe genetic variation in this Malagasy cohort, providing insight into the shared and unique patterns of genetic variation across the island. We observe phenotypic variation by location, and find high rates of hypertension particularly in the Southern Highlands sampling site as well as elevated self-reported malaria prevalence in the West Coast site relative to other sites. After filtering to a subset of 214 minimally-related individuals, we find a number of genetic associations with body composition traits, including many variants that are only observed in African populations or populations with admixed African ancestry from the 1000 Genomes Project. This study highlights the importance of including diverse populations in genomic research for the potential to gain novel insights, even with small cohort sizes. This project was conducted in partnership and consultation with local stakeholders in Madagascar and serves as an example of genomic research that prioritizes community engagement and that has potential impacts on our understanding of human health and disease.
Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma (ARMS) is a highly aggressive pediatric soft tissue cancer characterized by a recurrent 2;13 chromosome translocation. This translocation generates a PAX3-FOXO1 (P3F) fusion gene, which encodes a chimeric transcription factor with oncogenic activity. Using a human myoblast system that models targeted therapy directed against P3F, we demonstrated that the expression of the fibroblast growth factor 8 (FGF8), a direct transcriptional target of P3F, is necessary and sufficient for PAX3-FOXO1-independent tumor recurrence in addition to be required for the tumorigenic activity of primary tumors expressing P3F. In addition, we showed that FGF8 is expressed in human rhabdomyosarcoma cell lines that express P3F. We also demonstrated that FGF8 contributes to their proliferation and transformation in vitro, and is sufficient to maintain their oncogenicity after the loss of P3F expression. We suggest that targeting the expression of the PAX3-FOXO1 transcription factor can generate resistance and recommend that additional anticipated therapeutic approaches, such as targeting FGF8 pathway, may avoid this resistance mechanism.
Molecular and cellular determinants of response to immune checkpoint inhibitors are mostly unknown. Here we use whole exome, RNA and T cell receptor sequencing, imaging mass cytometry, immunohistochemistry and PD1-PDL1 interaction detection to profile 543 regions from 16 colorectal cancers (CRCs) subsequently treated with Pembrolizumab or Nivolumab. Independent of treatment response, CRCs express low levels of PD1 and PDL1 proteins and form less PD1-PDL1 complex than other cancers. Non hypermutated CRCs have no benefit from treatment, show WNT activation and low T cell infiltrates. Among hypermutated CRCs, those with durable benefit have clonal immunogenic alterations, clonally expanded T cells and potential for immune escape through dysfunctional antigen presentation. Responsive tumours are enriched in PD1-expressing cytotoxic and proliferating CD8 T cells and PDL1-expressing antigen presenting macrophages, which form high-density clusters of interacting cells. Our study shows that immune checkpoint inhibitors are most effective in highly infiltrated CRCs where they may release the interactions between macrophages and CD8 T cells thus promoting their priming and expansion in intra-tumour niches.
The molecular mechanisms underlying lethal castration-resistant prostate cancer remain poorly understood, with intratumoral heterogeneity a likely contributing factor. To examine the temporal aspects of resistance, we analyzed tumor heterogeneity in needle biopsies collected before and after treatment with androgen deprivation therapy. By doing so, we were able to couple clinical responsiveness and morphological information such as Gleason score to transcriptome-wide data. Our data-driven analysis of transcriptomes identified several distinct intratumoral cell populations, characterized by their unique gene expression profiles. Strikingly, certain cell populations present before treatment exhibited gene expression profiles that matched those of resistant tumor cell clusters, present after treatment. We confirmed that these clusters were resistant by the localization of active androgen receptors to the nuclei in cancer cells post-treatment. Our data also demonstrated that most stromal cells adjacent to resistant clusters do not express the androgen receptor, and we identified differentially expressed genes for these cells. Altogether, this study shows the potential to increase the power in predicting resistant tumors.
