LncRNA-Associated Genetic Etiologies Are Shared between Type 2 Diabetes and Cancers in the UAE Population

Roberta Giordo; Rida Gulsha; Sarah Kalla; George A Calin; Leonard Lipovich

doi:10.3390/cancers14143313

LncRNA-Associated Genetic Etiologies Are Shared between Type 2 Diabetes and Cancers in the UAE Population

Cancers (Basel). 2022 Jul 7;14(14):3313. doi: 10.3390/cancers14143313.

Authors

Roberta Giordo¹, Rida Gulsha¹, Sarah Kalla¹, George A Calin^{2

3}, Leonard Lipovich¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Medicine, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dubai 505055, United Arab Emirates.
² Department of Translational Molecular Pathology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
³ Center for RNA Interference and Non-Coding RNAs, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA.

Abstract

Numerous epidemiological studies place patients with T2D at a higher risk for cancer. Many risk factors, such as obesity, ageing, poor diet and low physical activity, are shared between T2D and cancer; however, the biological mechanisms linking the two diseases remain largely unknown. The advent of genome wide association studies (GWAS) revealed large numbers of genetic variants associated with both T2D and cancer. Most significant disease-associated variants reside in non-coding regions of the genome. Several studies show that single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at or near long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) genes may impact the susceptibility to T2D and cancer. Therefore, the identification of genetic variants predisposing individuals to both T2D and cancer may help explain the increased risk of cancer in T2D patients. We aim to investigate whether lncRNA genetic variants with significant diabetes and cancer associations overlap in the UAE population. We first performed an annotation-based analysis of UAE T2D GWAS, confirming the high prevalence of variants at or near non-coding RNA genes. We then explored whether these T2D SNPs in lncRNAs were relevant to cancer. We highlighted six non-coding genetic variants, jointly reaching statistical significance in T2D and cancer, implicating a shared genetic architecture between the two diseases in the UAE population.

Keywords: GWAS; SNP; T2D; UCSC Genome Browser; cancer; lncRNA.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Mohammed Bin Rashid University Internal Research Grant to Leonard Lipovich; the Mohammed Bin Rashid University Postdoctoral Fellowship to Rob-erta Giordo; and by the Al Jalila Foundation. We also gratefully acknowledge support from the Mohammed Bin Rashid University for Article processing fees/page charges for this manuscript.