Research story ·

Evaluating cancer polygenic risk scores across ancestry groups

Cancer polygenic risk scores were evaluated across ancestry groups in UK Biobank, highlighting the need for more diverse genetic studies.

The same cancer polygenic risk score shown in equally sized groups for evaluation across ancestries in UK Biobank. The same cancer polygenic risk score shown in equally sized groups for evaluation across ancestries in UK Biobank.
Conceptual evaluation across ancestry groups in UK Biobank; equal panels do not imply equal performance.

Most cancer genetic association studies available for this work involved people of European ancestry. We tested whether scores built from these studies could also distinguish breast and prostate cancer risk across ancestry groups in UK Biobank. The PLOS Genetics study found associations after scaling scores within each group, while underscoring the need for more diverse genetic studies and evaluation in each intended setting.

Publication

Fritsche L. G.@; Ma Y.; Zhang D.; Salvatore M.; Lee S.; Zhou X.; Mukherjee B. On cross-ancestry cancer polygenic risk scores. PLOS Genetics. 2021;17(9):e1009670. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1009670

@ Corresponding author.