Scientists from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have identified variants in two genes that are associated with accelerated aging in childhood cancer survivors. Their research looked at the difference between their biological age and chronological age. The study, published today in Genome Medicine, is the first to identify genetic risk factors for accelerated aging in pediatric cancer survivors.
Today a majority of children with cancer in the U.S. survive. However, some survivors develop diseases that typically occur in older adults. It is not totally clear why some patients are more susceptible to developing age-related conditions than others.
“This is one of a series of studies my lab has undertaken to investigate aging biomarkers in childhood cancer survivors,” said corresponding author Zhaoming Wang, Ph.D., of the Departments of Epidemiology and Cancer Control and Computational Biology. “We previously evaluated non-genetic risk factors including cancer treatments, health behaviors, and chronic health conditions that contribute to age acceleration. This study focuses on the underlying genetic factors among these patients.”
St. Jude follows over 6,000 childhood cancer survivors enrolled in the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort Study (SJLIFE). As part of SJLIFE, scientists have characterized genetic variations by conducting whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of survivors’ DNA. Wang’s group analyzed the link between common genetic variants derived from the WGS data with epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) in SJLIFE participants. EAA is a measure of the difference between “biological” and chronological age for each survivor, and it strongly correlates with the development of age-related diseases.