Abstract PO5-09-03: Multi-tissue transcriptome-wide association studies identified genes for intrinsic subtypes of breast cancer
Authors: Li James , McClellan Julian , Zhang Haoyu , Gao Guimin , Huo Dezheng 
Published: May 2024

Background: Though several genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of breast cancer (BC) have identified common variants which differ between intrinsic subtypes, the genes through which these variants act through to impact BC risk have not been fully established. Furthermore, transcriptome-wide association studies (TWAS) have thus far been primarily employed to identify genes associated with overall BC risk, while overlooking how the influence of common variation on gene expression may contribute to subtype-specific differences. Methods: In this study, we performed two complementary multi-tissue TWASs for each of the following BC intrinsic subtypes: Luminal A-like, Luminal B-like, Luminal B/HER2-negative-like, HER2-enriched-like, Triple Negative BC. These two approaches included 1) an expression-based approach that collated TWAS signals from expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) across multiple tissues using the Aggregated Cauchy Association Test (ACAT) and 2) a splicing-based approach that utilized two applications of ACAT to collate splicing QTLs (sQTLs) for a given gene in a tissue and then across tissues. To perform these two TWASs, we utilized e/sQTL models trained in 11 tissues from the Genotype-Tissue Expression Project including breast, ovary, uterus, vagina, EBV-transformed lymphocytes, whole blood, spleen, liver, subcutaneous adipose, visceral adipose, and cell-cultured fibroblasts. GWAS summary statistics were previously generated from 133,384 BC cases and 113,789 controls who were participants in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC). We further performed our TWAS while conditioning e/sQTL effect sizes on nearby GWAS index SNPs. Additionally, we utilized gene-based fine-mapping of eQTLs and sQTL to identify candidate causal genes for each intrinsic subtype. Results: Overall, we identified 164 genes in 69 loci that were associated with Luminal A-like, 19 genes in 9 loci with Luminal B-like, 18 genes in 11 loci with Luminal B/HER2-negative-like, 10 genes in 7 loci with HER2-enriched-like, and 29 genes in 12 loci with TNBC. Among these genes, 17 genes had not been reported in previous TWAS of BC, and 140 genes, 1 gene, 2 genes, 2 genes, and 16 genes were uniquely associated with each of the intrinsic subtypes, respectively. Additionally, we identified one gene associated with Luminal A-like and one gene with Luminal B-like BC that were each in a locus located at least 1.4 Mb from published GWAS hits. Furthermore, we identified 106, 11, 10, 5, and 21 candidate causal genes for each of the intrinsic subtypes, respectively, that had a posterior inclusion probability of 0.9 in at least one e/sQTL. Conclusion: In summary, our multi-tissue TWAS corroborated previous GWAS loci for overall BC risk and intrinsic subtypes, while underscoring how common variation impacts BC etiology by modulating the expression and splicing of genes in multiple tissue types.

Citation Format: James Li, Julian McClellan, Haoyu Zhang, Guimin Gao, Dezheng Huo. Multi-tissue transcriptome-wide association studies identified genes for intrinsic subtypes of breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2023 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2023 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(9 Suppl):Abstract nr PO5-09-03.