Genomic risk factors for cervical cancer

Abstract

Cervical cancer is the fourth common cancer amongst women worldwide. Infection by high‐risk human papilloma virus is necessary in most cases, but not sufficient to develop invasive cervical cancer. Despite a predicted genetic heritability in the range of other gynaecological cancers, only few genomic susceptibility loci have been identified thus far. Various case‐control association studies have found corroborative evidence for several independent risk variants at the 6p21.3 locus (HLA), while many reports of associations with variants outside the HLA region remain to be validated in other cohorts. Here, we review cervical cancer susceptibility variants arising from recent genome‐wide association studies and meta‐analysis in large cohorts and propose 2q14 (PAX8), 17q12 (GSDMB), and 5p15.33 (CLPTM1L) as consistently replicated non‐HLA cervical cancer susceptibility loci. We further discuss the available evidence for these loci, knowledge gaps, future perspectives, and the potential impact of these findings on precision medicine strategies to combat cervical cancer.