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Development and validation of genome-wide polygenic risk scores for predicting breast cancer incidence in Japanese females: a population-based case-cohort study

Breast Cancer Research and Treatment volume 197, pages 661–671 (2023)Cite this article

Abstract

Purpose

This study aimed to develop an ancestry-specific polygenic risk scores (PRSs) for the prediction of breast cancer events in Japanese females and validate it in a longitudinal cohort study.

Methods

Using publicly available summary statistics of female breast cancer genome-wide association study (GWAS) of Japanese and European ancestries, we, respectively, developed 31 candidate genome-wide PRSs using pruning and thresholding (P + T) and LDpred methods with varying parameters. Among the candidate PRS models, the best model was selected using a case-cohort dataset (63 breast cancer cases and 2213 sub-cohorts of Japanese females during a median follow-up of 11.9 years) according to the maximal predictive ability by Harrell’s C-statistics. The best-performing PRS for each derivation GWAS was evaluated in another independent case-cohort dataset (260 breast cancer cases and 7845 sub-cohorts of Japanese females during a median follow-up of 16.9 years).

Results

For the best PRS model involving 46,861 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs; P + T method with PT = 0.05 and R2 = 0.2) derived from Japanese-ancestry GWAS, the Harrell’s C-statistic was 0.598 ± 0.018 in the evaluation dataset. The age-adjusted hazard ratio for breast cancer in females with the highest PRS quintile compared with those in the lowest PRS quintile was 2.47 (95% confidence intervals, 1.64–3.70). The PRS constructed using Japanese-ancestry GWAS demonstrated better predictive performance for breast cancer in Japanese females than that using European-ancestry GWAS (Harrell’s C-statistics 0.598 versus 0.586).

Conclusion

This study developed a breast cancer PRS for Japanese females and demonstrated the usefulness of the PRS for breast cancer risk stratification.

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Data availability

GWAS summary statistics of Japanese and European ancestry are available at http://jenger.riken.jp/en/result and https://bcac.ccge.medschl.cam.ac.uk/bcacdata/oncoarray/oncoarray-and-combined-summary-result/gwas-summary-results-breast-cancer-risk-2017/. Ethical guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare of Japan and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan ensure that the privacy of study participants prevents the public provision of individual data. Additionally, the informed consent we obtained did not include a provision for public data sharing. Researchers interested in verifying or replicating the results of our study can submit a research proposal to the Administration Office of the Japan Public Health Center-based prospective study at jphcadmin@ml.res.ncc.go.jp. The study group board will follow a prescribed process to evaluate the importance of the research proposal in consideration of the study participants’ privacy and may provide special permission to access a minimal dataset.

Abbreviations

PRS:

Polygenic risk score

GWAS:

Genome-wide association studies

SNP:

Single nucleotide polymorphism

JPHC:

Japan Public Health Center‐based

PHC:

Public health center

QC:

Quality control

LD:

Linkage disequilibrium

AUROC:

Area under the receiver operating characteristic

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Acknowledgements

We thank the participants and staff involved in this study. The JPHC study members are listed on the following website: https://epi.ncc.go.jp/en/jphc/781/8896.html. We are indebted to the Aomori, Iwate, Akita, Ibaraki, Niigata, Osaka, Kochi, Nagasaki, and Okinawa Cancer Registries for providing the incidence data. We also thank Drs. Hiromi Sakamoto and Teruhiko Yoshida, staff at the Genetics Division, National Cancer Center Research Institute, and the Department of Clinical Genomics, Fundamental Innovative Oncology Core, National Cancer Center Research Institute, and Drs. Yukihide Momozawa and Michiaki Kubo, and staff at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Cancer Center Research and Development Fund (Grant Nos. 23-A-31 [toku], 26-A-2, 29-A-4, and 2020-J-4), Grant-in-Aid for Cancer Research from the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare of Japan (Grant No. 19shi-2), and Practical Research for Innovative Cancer Control (Grant Nos. JP16ck0106095, JP19ck0106266, and JP22ck0106551) from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or the preparation of the study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Health Economics, School of Public Health, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

    Hiroyuki Ohbe & Hideo Yasunaga

  2. Division of Biomedical Information Analysis, Iwate Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization, Iwate Medical University, 1-1-1 Idaidori, Yahaba, Shiwa, Iwate, 028-3694, Japan

    Tsuyoshi Hachiya, Yoichi Sutoh, Yayoi Otsuka-Yamasaki & Atsushi Shimizu

  3. Division of Epidemiology, National Cancer Center Institute for Cancer Control, 5-1-1 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 104-0045, Japan

    Taiki Yamaji, Shiori Nakano & Motoki Iwasaki

  4. Division of Cohort Research, National Cancer Center Institute for Cancer Control, 5-1-1 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 104-0045, Japan

    Yoshihisa Miyamoto, Norie Sawada, Manami Inoue, Shoichiro Tsugane & Motoki Iwasaki

  5. Division of Prevention, National Cancer Center Institute for Cancer Control, 5-1-1 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 104-0045, Japan

    Manami Inoue

  6. National Institute of Health and Nutrition, National Institutes of Biomedical Innovation, Health and Nutrition, Tokyo, 162-8636, Japan

    Shoichiro Tsugane

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  1. Hiroyuki Ohbe
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Consortia

for the Japan Public Health Center-based Prospective Study Group

Contributions

HO, TH, and TY conceived the study. TH and TY conducted the genotyping, quality control, and imputation. TH derived genome-wide PRS models by analyzing publicly available GWAS summaries. HO, TH, and TY analyzed the datasets from the JPHC study. SN, YM, YS, YOY, AS, HY, NS, M. Inoue, and ST interpreted data and contributed to the manuscript. M. Iwasaki supervised the study. All authors provided critical feedback on the analysis and the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Tsuyoshi Hachiya or Taiki Yamaji.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

TH is a board member of Genome Analytics Japan Inc.

Ethical approval

The genetic research in the JPHC study, including this study, was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the National Cancer Center, Tokyo, Japan (Approval No.2011–044).

Consent to participations

Before the initiation of genetic research in the JPHC study, we announced its execution via our website and contacted all living blood donors by mail to provide them with the opportunity to opt out of participation in the research.

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Not applicable.

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Ohbe, H., Hachiya, T., Yamaji, T. et al. Development and validation of genome-wide polygenic risk scores for predicting breast cancer incidence in Japanese females: a population-based case-cohort study. Breast Cancer Res Treat 197, 661–671 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10549-022-06843-6

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Keywords

  • Breast cancer
  • Polygenic risk score
  • Genome-wide association study
  • East-Asian
  • Japanese