• Division of Cancer and Genetics, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Heath Park, Cardiff, CF14 4XN, UK.
• Colon Cancer Genetics Group, Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh EH4 2XU, UK; Department of Oncology, West China School of Public Health and West China Fourth Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610000, China.
• Epidemiology Department, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA, USA.
• Division of Genetics and Epidemiology, The Institute of Cancer Research, London, SW7 3RP, UK.
• Department of Genetics, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, P.O. Box 3354, Riyadh 11211, Saudi Arabia.
• CRUK/MRC Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology, University of Oxford, Roosevelt Drive, Oxford OX3 7DQ, UK.
• MRC Clinical Trials Unit, University College of London, 125 Kingsway, London, WC2B 6NH, UK.
• Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
• Colorectal Oncogenomics Group, Department of Clinical Pathology, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia; Centre for Cancer Research, Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia; Genomic Medicine and Family Cancer Clinic, The Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
• Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

BACKGROUND: While genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified germline variants influencing the risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC), there has been limited examination of the possible role of inherited variation as a determinant of patient outcome.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: We performed a GWAS for overall survival (OS) in 1926 patients with advanced CRC from the COIN and COIN-B clinical trials. For single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) showing an association with OS (P < 1.0 × 10^-5), we conducted sensitivity analyses based on the time from diagnosis to death and sought independent replications in 5675 patients from the Study of Colorectal Cancer in Scotland (SOCCS) and 16,964 patients from the International Survival Analysis in Colorectal cancer Consortium (ISACC). We analysed the Human Protein Atlas to determine if ERBB4 expression was associated with survival in 438 patients with colon adenocarcinomas.

RESULTS: The most significant SNP associated with OS was rs79612564 in ERBB4 (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.24, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.16-1.32, P = 1.9 × 10^-7). SNPs at 17 loci had suggestive associations for OS and all had similar effects on the time from diagnosis to death. No lead SNPs were independently replicated in the meta-analysis of all patients from SOCCS and ISACC. However, rs79612564 was significant in stage-IV patients from SOCCS (P = 2.1 × 10^-2) but not ISACC (P = 0.89) and SOCCS combined with COIN and COIN-B attained genome-wide significance (P = 1.7 × 10^-8). Patients with high ERBB4 expression in their colon adenocarcinomas had worse survival (HR = 1.50, 95% CI = 1.1-1.9, P = 4.6 × 10^-2).

CONCLUSIONS: Genetic and expression data support a potential role for rs79612564 in the receptor tyrosine kinase ERBB4 as a predictive biomarker of survival.