A functional polymorphism in CSF1R gene is a novel susceptibility marker for lung cancer among never-smoking females.

It has been estimated that the proportion of never-smokers among females with lung cancer is 53% worldwide and 75% in Korea. We conducted a two-stage study to identify genetic factors responsible for lung cancer susceptibility in female never-smokers. In a discovery set, 1969 potentially functional single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of 1151 genes, which were related to cancer development and progression, were evaluated using the Affymetrix custom-made GeneChip in 181 female never-smokers with lung cancer and 179 controls. A replication study was performed on an independent cohort of 596 cases and 1194 healthy controls. Sixteen SNPs with p < 0.05 for genotype distribution in the discovery set were enrolled in the replication study. Among 16 SNPs, three SNPs (colony-stimulating factor 1 receptor [CSF1R] rs10079250A>G, tumor protein p63 [TP63] rs7631358G>A, and corepressor interacting with RBPJ 1 [CIR1] rs13009079T>C) were found to be significantly associated with lung cancer in the same direction as the discovery set. Homology-based model for CSF1R indicated that the rs10079250A>G leads to increased positive charge of CSF-binding region of CSF1R, thereby increasing the chance of binding between CSF and CSF1R. In addition, this SNP was found to increase the phosphorylation of a mitogen-activated protein kinase, JNK. Our results suggest that the three SNPs, particularly CSF1R rs10079250, may contribute to lung cancer susceptibility in never-smoking females.