Ancestral-derived effects on the mutational landscape of laryngeal cancer

- The mutational landscapes of laryngeal cancer differ between African-American and European-American patients.
- Cancers from African-American patients have a lower proportion of C > A, and C > G changes compared to European-Americans.
- Study reveals differences in frequently mutated genes between African-American and European-American patients.
- At the molecular level, race appears to be a factor associated with the risk disparity observed in laryngeal cancer.

Laryngeal cancer disproportionately affects more African-Americans than European-Americans. Here, we analyze the genome-wide somatic point mutations from the tumors of 13 African-Americans and 57 European-Americans from TCGA to differentiate between environmental and ancestrally-inherited factors. The mean number of mutations was different between African-Americans (151.31) and European-Americans (277.63). Other differences in the overall mutational landscape between African-American and European-American were also found. The frequency of C > A, and C > G were significantly different between the two populations (p-value < 0.05). Context nucleotide signatures for some mutation types significantly differ between these two populations. Thus, the context nucleotide signatures along with other factors could be related to the observed mutational landscape differences between two races. Finally, we show that mutated genes associated with these mutational differences differ between the two populations. Thus, at the molecular level, race appears to be a factor in the progression of laryngeal cancer with ancestral genomic signatures best explaining these differences.