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Reply to ”A promoter polymorphism in the CASP8 gene is not associated with cancer risk”

Nature Genetics volume 40, pages 260–261 (2008)Cite this article

Sun et al. reply:

We recently identified a 6-bp insertion/deletion polymorphism (−652 6N ins/del) in the promoter of the CASP8 gene that removes an Sp1 binding site and that was shown to be associated with reduced CASP8 transcription in lymphocytes. We further demonstrated that T lymphocytes with the deletion variant had lower caspase-8 activity and lower cancer cell antigen–induced cell death. We also reported that this genetic variant was associated with significantly reduced risk of several human cancers in a large case-control study in homogenous Han Chinese populations1. Haiman et al. now report a case-control study seeking to replicate our findings of this CASP8 variant in breast, prostate or colorectal cancers in multiple US populations of various ancestries and self-declared ethnic identification (African Americans, Japanese Americans, Latinos, European Americans, Native Hawaiians and Chinese Americans), but they did not find statistical evidence for any association2. Although the reasons for the discrepancies between their findings and ours are currently unknown, we have some thoughts that may offer some explanation.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Etiology and Carcinogenesis, Cancer Institute and Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, 100021, China

    Tong Sun, Wen Tan, Yongli Guo, Ming Yang, Xuemei Zhang & Dongxin Lin

  2. Department of Medical Oncology, Cancer Institute and Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, 100021, China

    Yuankai Shi & Jiarui Yao

  3. Beijing Genomics Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100021, China

    Yang Gao, Sufang Ma, Qingrun Zhang & Changqing Zeng

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  1. Tong Sun
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  2. Yang Gao
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  12. Dongxin Lin
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Correspondence to Dongxin Lin.

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Sun, T., Gao, Y., Tan, W. et al. Reply to ”A promoter polymorphism in the CASP8 gene is not associated with cancer risk”. Nat Genet 40, 260–261 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng0308-260

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