Abstract 3401: Inter-individual variation in MUC5B allele specific expression in normal bronchial epithelial cells and relationship to lung cancer
Authors: Zhang Xiaolu , Yeo Jiyoun , Crawford Erin L. , Blomquist Thomas M. , Willey James C. 
Published: May 2015

Background: Familial interstitial pneumonia and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis are associated with increased risk of lung cancer. Seibold et al (NEJM, 2011) recently identified a common variant in the putative promoter of MUC5B (rs35705950) associated with level of MUC5B expression in lung tissue and also with development of these diseases. The goal of this study was to determine whether the MUC5B rs35705950 variant is associated with a) MUC5B allele-specific expression (ASE) or total expression in normal bronchial epithelial cells (NBEC) or b) lung cancer risk. Through funding in part from RC2 CA148572 and HL108016 we collected NBEC samples from over 500 subjects with lung cancer or at risk for lung cancer. Methods: This was a pilot study of 85 subjects (26 cancer cases and 59 non-cancer controls). RNA was extracted from normal bronchial airway brush NBEC specimens of 85 subjects and reverse transcribed. Using next generation sequencing (NGS), allele-specific expression (ASE) was measured as allelic imbalance in each cDNA at three marker SNPs in MUC5B coding region (rs2075859, rs2943510, and rs4963059) selected for common (&gt;0.05) minor allele frequency, using matched peripheral blood cell gDNA as a control. Specifically, each cDNA and matched gDNA sample was subjected to targeted competitive template multiplex PCR amplicon library generation followed by NGS (Blomquist et al, PLOS one, 2013) on Illumina Hiseq platform. This NGS method controlled for inter-target variation in PCR amplification during library preparation by measuring each transcript native template relative to a known number of synthetic competitive template internal standard copies. The genotype at putative cis-regulatory SNP rs35705950 was assessed in gDNA from 95 subjects (31 cancer cases and 64 non-cancer controls) including those assessed for ASE using a TaqMan® SNP assay. Results: There was significant (p&lt;0.001) inter-individual variation in MUB5B allelic imbalance among heterozygotes at all three marker SNP loci and the level of imbalance measured at rs2075859 was greater in NBEC from cancer cases compared with non-cancer controls (P=0.0264). The genotype (i.e., heterozygote vs homozygote) at putative cis-regulatory SNP rs35705950 was not associated with MUC5B allelic imbalance or with lung cancer status. Inter-individual variation in MUC5B total expression was large (&gt;3 log) but not associated with lung cancer. Conclusions: These results support previous observations that there is significant inter-individual variation in cis-regulation of MUC5B in NBEC and suggest that this variation also may contribute to inherited lung cancer risk. Lack of association between rs35705950 genotype and MUC5B ASE may have been due to role of other cis-regulatory factors, and/or environmentally associated transfactors that contributed to large inter-individual variation in total MUC5B expression.

Citation Format: Xiaolu Zhang, Jiyoun Yeo, Erin L. Crawford, Thomas M. Blomquist, James C. Willey. Inter-individual variation in MUC5B allele specific expression in normal bronchial epithelial cells and relationship to lung cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 3401. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-3401