Associations between genetically predicted plasma N-glycans and pancreatic cancer risk

• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6852264
• Publication Date: 2023-08-22
• Authors: Duo Liu; Tianying Zhao; Jingjing Zhu; Sodbo Sharapov; Evgeny Tiys; Lang Wu
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 0303 health sciences; pancreatic cancer; 3. Good health; Life; genetic instruments; pgp110; QH501-531; plasma n-glycans; TP248.13-248.65; risk; Biotechnology

Objectives: Pancreatic cancer is a deadly malignancy. There are urgent needs to better characterize the etiology and identify biomarkers for effective risk assessment. Previous studies suggest a potential link between glycans and pancreatic cancer. To better characterize the relationship between N-glycans and pancreatic cancer risk, we performed a study to comprehensively characterize the associations between genetically predicted N-glycan levels in plasma and pancreatic cancer risk. Methods: Using genetic variants that are reported to be associated with plasma N-glycan levels in large genome-wide association studies as instruments, we evaluated the associations between plasma N-glycans and pancreatic cancer risk, by analyzing data of 8,275 pancreatic cancer cases and 6,723 controls. Results: After careful analyses, we only observed an association between genetically predicted levels of PGP110 in plasma and pancreatic cancer risk, after adjusting for multiple comparisons. After careful analyses, we observed that lower predicted levels of PGP110 were significantly associated with an increased risk of pancreatic cancer, after adjusting for multiple comparisons. Conclusions: Our agnostic study did not support strong associations between N-glycans and pancreatic cancer risk, although the observed association of PGP110 warrants further investigation.