Abstract 6146: Characterizing underlying molecular mechanisms of prostate cancer risk variants identified from multi-ethnic GWAS
Authors: Wu Zexun , Vu Andrew , Nelson-Moore Ethan S. , Cao Huan , Rhie Suhn K. 
Published: March 2024

Prostate cancer (PCa) is a complex disease with the second leading cause of cancer death in US males. Multi-ethnic genome-wide association studies (GWAS) identified a thousand genetic variants associated with PCa risk in different races. However, the majority of risk variants are located in non-coding regions, making it challenging to understand their contribution to PCa risk. Non-coding regions include functional regulatory elements (REs) such as promoters and enhancers, whose activity can be evaluated by histone modification H3K4me3 and H3K27ac, respectively. In this study, we integrated PCa risk variants with hundreds of H3K4me3 and H3K27ac ChIP-seq data from normal and cancer prostate cell lines and tissues, finding 122 variants in promoters and 301 variants in enhancers. Enhancers are distal to promoters, and they form loops to regulate gene expression, mediated by transcription factors (TFs). Enhancer activities are tightly associated with cell fate. Genetic variants can affect the activity of enhancers by changing the binding preference of TFs and such changes can affect chromatin interactions and dysregulate gene expression. We hypothesize that allele changes of enhancer variants contribute to PCa risk differently among individuals from different ancestries, leading to the development of heterogeneous PCa molecular subgroups, characterized by genetic alterations including TMPRSS2-ERG fusion. By integrating H3K27ac ChIP-seq data from prostate cell lines derived from European (EUR) and African (AFR) ancestries, we found 185 risk variants in enhancers in EUR cell lines and 69 risk variants in enhancers in AFR cell lines. Next, we integrated patient tissue-derived H3K27ac ChIP-seq data and performed chromatin quantitative trait loci (cQTL) and allelic imbalance (AI) analyses to determine risk variants associated with enhancer activity. Among the 185 risk enhancer variants in EUR and 69 in AFR cell lines, we found 130 and 46 with significant association, respectively. To determine TFs that change binding upon allele change of enhancer risk variants, we integrated hundreds of TF ChIP-seq data from prostate cell lines and tissues. Among the 185 risk enhancer variants in EUR and 69 in AFR cell lines, we found 142 and 44 variants bound by TFs, respectively. When we further performed cQTL and AI analyses for FOXA1, HOXB13, and AR, we found 87 and 29 variants significantly associated with TF binding affinity, respectively. Moreover, we found that these associations differ between TMPRSS2-ERG fusion positive and negative tumors. To identify the target genes of enhancer risk variants, we are currently integrating chromatin interaction data including Hi-C and Micro-C. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the underlying molecular mechanisms of risk variants in various populations and individuals which lead to the development of heterogeneous PCa subgroups.

Citation Format: Zexun Wu, Andrew Vu, Ethan S. Nelson-Moore, Huan Cao, Suhn K. Rhie. Characterizing underlying molecular mechanisms of prostate cancer risk variants identified from multi-ethnic GWAS [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 6146.