We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of breast cancer by genotyping 528,173 SNPs in 1,145 postmenopausal women of European ancestry with invasive breast cancer and 1,142 controls. We identified four SNPs in intron 2 of FGFR2 (which encodes a receptor tyrosine kinase and is amplified or overexpressed in some breast cancers) that were highly associated with breast cancer and confirmed this association in 1,776 affected individuals and 2,072 controls from three additional studies. Across the four studies, the association with all four SNPs was highly statistically significant (P(trend) for the most strongly associated SNP (rs1219648) = 1.1 x 10(-10); population attributable risk = 16%). Four SNPs at other loci most strongly associated with breast cancer in the initial GWAS were not associated in the replication studies. Our summary results from the GWAS are available online in a form that should speed the identification of additional risk loci.
The Cancer Genetic Markers of Susceptibility (CGEMS) initiative has conducted a three-stage genome-wide association study (GWAS) of breast cancer in 9,770 cases and 10,799 controls. In Stage 1, we genotyped 528,173 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 1,145 cases of invasive breast cancer among postmenopausal white women, and 1,142 controls; in Stage 2, 24,909 SNPs with low p values observed in Stage 1 were analyzed in 4,547 cases and 4,434 controls. In Stage 3 we investigated 21 loci in 4,078 cases and 5,223 controls with low p values from Stage 1 and 2 combined. Two novel loci achieved genome-wide significance. A pericentromeric SNP on chromosome 1p11.2, rs11249433, (p=6.74 × 10-10 adjusted genotype test with 2 degrees of freedom) resides in a large block of linkage disequilibrium neighboring NOTCH2 and FCGR1B and is predominantly associated with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. A second SNP, rs999737 on chromosome 14q24.1 (p=1.74 × 10−7), localizes to RAD51L1, a gene in the homologous recombination DNA repair pathway, a prior candidate pathway for breast cancer susceptibility. We confirmed previously reported markers on chromosome 2q35, 5q11.2, 5p12, 8q24, 10q26, and 16q12.1. Our results underscore the importance of large-scale replication in the identification of low penetrance breast cancer alleles.
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