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Editorial
. 2019 Jun;120(12):1087-1089.
doi: 10.1038/s41416-019-0475-9. Epub 2019 May 21.

Moving from one to many: insights from the growing list of pleiotropic cancer risk genes

Stephanie A Bien  1 , Ulrike Peters  2   3
Affiliations
Editorial

Moving from one to many: insights from the growing list of pleiotropic cancer risk genes

Stephanie A Bien et al. Br J Cancer. 2019 Jun.

Abstract

Pleiotropy, a phenomenon in which a single gene affects multiple phenotypes, is becoming very common among different cancer types and cancer-related phenotypes, such as those in hormonal, cardiometabolic and inflammatory/immune conditions. The discovery of pleiotropic associations can improve our understanding of cancer and help to target investigation of genes with greater clinical relevance.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Examples of pleiotropic genes near a GWAS-identified cancer locus associated with another cancer and/or phenotype in a relevant condition. Each gene represents a pleiotropic locus that is associated with multiple cancer types and/or one cancer type, and cancer-related traits and biomarkers. Connections in this chord diagram indicate that variants in or near respective genes associate with both a cancer type and one or more phenotypes within the linked conditions. The width of the chord corresponds to the number of phenotypes within the respective area; for example, the widest chord between TERT and Other cancer represents association between the TERT locus and 12 different cancers
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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