Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies a New Locus at 7q21.13 Associated with Hepatitis B Virus-Related Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers worldwide. In China, chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection remains the major risk factor for HCC. In this study, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) among Chinese populations to identify novel genetic loci contributing to susceptibility to HBV-related HCC. GWAS scan is performed in a collection of 205 HBV-related HCC trios (each trio includes an affected proband and his/her both parents), and 355 chronic HBV carriers with HCC (cases) and 360 chronic HBV carriers without HCC (controls), followed by two rounds of replication studies totally consisting of 3,796 cases and 2,544 controls. We identified a novel association signal within the gene at 7q21.13 (index rs10272859, OR = 1.28, = 9.46 × 10). Furthermore, we observed that the at-risk rs10272859[G] allele was significantly associated with higher mRNA expression levels of in liver tissues. Chromosome conformation capture assays in liver cells confirmed that a physical interaction exists between the promoter region of and the risk-associated SNPs in strong linkage disequilibrium with the index rs10272859 at 7q21.13. This index rs10272859 also showed significant association with the survival of HCC patients. Our findings highlight a novel locus at 7q21.13 conferring both susceptibility and prognosis to HBV-related HCC, and suggest the gene to be the functional target of the 7q21.13 locus. .