Cancer registry data makes clear that children of different ancestries can have different risks of ALL. How much of this risk is due to genetics versus environment? CLIC researchers from around the world are able to answer this question.
Dr. Kevin Urayama, our CLIC partner from Japan, and his team recently published a study on the risk of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in Japanese children. They performed a genome wide association study (GWAS) to look closely at genes that may be related to ALL, especially those that are known to be associated with ALL in European, Hispanic, and African children. They gathered a population of Japanese children (cases and controls) from the Tokyo Children Cancer Study Group (TCCSG) and Japanese Pediatric Leukemia/Lymphoma Study Group (JPLSG), two large national cancer registries.
The researchers confirmed that eight genes contributing to the risk of ALL in European, Hispanic, and African people also affected the risk of ALL in Japanese children. They found the presence of two genetic regions not previously associated with ALL among European children were significantly associated with ALL in their Japanese population. The scientists noted that these results may still need to be explored among other East Asian populations.
The CLIC Genomics Project is working to aggregate genetic data from childhood cancer studies in order to perform more large-scale, diverse GWAS. This initiative will increase the diversity and statistical power of future CLIC investigations into the causes of ALL among children from different backgrounds.
For information about the risk of ALL for latino children, see another study by CLIC partners: Genetic Risk Scores for ALL in Latino Children. Visit clic.ngo/research for more discoveries from CLIC.
Article Title: Genome-wide assessment of genetic risk loci for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia in Japanese patients.
Authors: Hangai M, Kawaguchi T, Takagi M, Matsuo K, Jeon S, Chiang CWK, Dewan AT, De Smith AJ, Imamura T, Okamoto Y, Saito AM, Deguchi T, Kubo M, Tanaka Y, Ayukawa Y, Hori T, Ohki K, Kiyokawa N, Inukai T, Arakawa Y, Mori M, Hasegawa D, Tomizawa D, Fukushima H, Yuza Y, Noguchi Y, Taneyama Y, Ota S, Goto H, Yanagimachi M, Keino D, Koike K, Toyama D, Nakazawa Y, Nakamura K, Moriwaki K, Sekinaka Y, Morita D, Hirabayashi S, Hosoya Y, Yoshimoto Y, Yoshihara H, Ozawa M, Kobayashi S, Morisaki N, Gyeltshen T, Takahashi O, Okada Y, Matsuda M, Tanaka T, Inazawa J, Takita J, Ishida Y, Ohara A, Metayer C, Wiemels JL, Ma X, Mizutani S, Koh K, Momozawa Y, Horibe K, Matsuda F, Kato M, Manabe A, Urayama KY.
Published In: Haematologica. 2024 Apr 1;109(4):1247-1252. doi: 10.3324/haematol.2023.282914. PMID: 37881853; PMCID: PMC10985430.