title: Exploring genetic susceptibility to cancer in diverse populations.
abstract: Incidence rates for many cancers differ markedly by race/ethnicity and furthering our understanding of the genetic and environmental causes of such disparities is a scientific and public health need. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are widely acknowledged to provide important information about the etiology of common cancers. To date, these studies have been primarily conducted in European-derived populations. There are important reasons for extending the reach of GWAS studies to other groups and for conducting multiethnic genetic studies involving multiple populations and admixed populations. These include a (1) need to discover the full scope of variants that affect risk of disease in all populations, (2) furthering the understanding of disease pathways, and (3) to assist in fine-mapping of genetic associations by exploiting the differences in linkage disequilibrium between populations to narrow the range of marker alleles demarking regions that contain a true biologically relevant variant. Challenges to multiethnic studies relating to study power, control for hidden population structure, imputation, and use of shared controls for multiple cancer endpoints are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine and the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. haiman@usc.edu
authors.forename: Christopher A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Haiman
authors.forename: Daniel O
authors.initials: DO
authors.lastname: Stram
mesh_terms: D005006:Ethnicity / Q000235:genetics; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease / Q000235:genetics*; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D009154:Mutation; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000208:ethnology / Q000235:genetics*; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D011634:Public Health / Q000379:methods; D012307:Risk Factors