PRState: Incorporating genetic ancestry in prostate cancer risk scores for men of African ancestry

• Published in: BMC cancer Vol. 22; no. 1; pp. 1289 - 11
• Main Authors: Pagadala, Meghana S, Linscott, Joshua A, Talwar, James V, Seibert, Tyler M, Rose, Brent, Lynch, Julie, Panizzon, Matthew, Hauger, Richard, Hansen, Moritz H, Sammon, Jesse D, Hayn, Matthew H, Kader, Karim, Carter, Hannah, Ryan, Stephen T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 09.12.2022; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: African; Analysis; Ancestry; Care and treatment; Consortia; Diagnosis; Family medical history; Genealogy; Genetic aspects; Genetic Predisposition to Disease; Genome-wide association studies; Genome-Wide Association Study; Genomes; Genotype & phenotype; Genotypes; Heritability; Humans; Male; Metastases; Methods; Polygenic Risk Score (PRS); Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; Principal components analysis; Prostate Cancer; Prostate Cancer Risk; Prostatic Neoplasms - genetics; Prostatic Neoplasms - pathology; Ratios; Regression analysis; Risk Factors; Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP); Single nucleotide polymorphisms; Single-nucleotide polymorphism; Socioeconomic factors; Taiwan; Ancestry; Prostate Cancer; Polygenic Risk Score (PRS); Prostate Cancer Risk; Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP); African
• ISSN: 1471-2407; 1471-2407
• DOI: 10.1186/s12885-022-10258-3

Prostate cancer (PrCa) is one of the most genetically driven solid cancers with heritability estimates as high as 57%. Men of African ancestry are at an increased risk of PrCa; however, current polygenic risk score (PRS) models are based on European ancestry groups and may not be broadly applicable. The objective of this study was to construct an African ancestry-specific PrCa PRS (PRState) and evaluate its performance. African ancestry group of 4,533 individuals in ELLIPSE consortium was used for discovery of African ancestry-specific PrCa SNPs. PRState was constructed as weighted sum of genotypes and effect sizes from genome-wide association study (GWAS) of PrCa in African ancestry group. Performance was evaluated using ROC-AUC analysis. We identified African ancestry-specific PrCa risk loci on chromosomes 3, 8, and 11 and constructed a polygenic risk score (PRS) from 10 African ancestry-specific PrCa risk SNPs, achieving an AUC of 0.61 [0.60-0.63] and 0.65 [0.64-0.67], when combined with age and family history. Performance dropped significantly when using ancestry-mismatched PRS models but remained comparable when using trans-ancestry models. Importantly, we validated the PRState score in the Million Veteran Program (MVP), demonstrating improved prediction of PrCa and metastatic PrCa in individuals of African ancestry. African ancestry-specific PRState improves PrCa prediction in African ancestry groups in ELLIPSE consortium and MVP. This study underscores the need for inclusion of individuals of African ancestry in gene variant discovery to optimize PRSs and identifies African ancestry-specific variants for use in future studies.