“Genetic variation and cancer”

Genomic variation, through its effect on gene structure and expression, plays an important role in disease predisposition, biology, and clinical response to therapy. Cancer mutations can be classified as germline (inherited) and somatic (tumoral). In the first part of my talk, I will describe a project called ARCTIC (Assessment of Risk for Colorectal Tumours in Canada) which is designed to identify inherited variants predisposing to colorectal cancer. Employing a multi-stage genome-wide association strategy involving 7480 cases and 7779 controls, we identified several loci associated with colorectal cancer. I will focus on a locus on chromosomes 8q, which has also been implicated in prostate cancer.