A germline variant N375S in MET and gastric cancer susceptibility in a Chinese population

摘要

MET tyrosine kinase and its ligand,hepatocyte growth factor(HGF),play a pivotal role in the activties of tumor cells.A germline missense variant in exon 2 of the MET gene,N375S(rs33917957 A>G),may alter the binding affinity of MET for HGF and thus modify the risk of tumorigenesis.In this study,we performed a case-control study to assess the association between N375S and gastric cancer risk in 1,681 gastric cancer cases and 1,858 cancer-free controls.Logistic regression analysis was applied to estimate crude and adjusted odds ratios(ORs) and 95% confidence intervals(CIs) for the associations between genotypes and gastric cancer risk.We found that MET N375S variant genotypes(NS/SS) were associated with a significantly decreased risk of gastric cancer(OR = 0.78,95% CI = 0.63-0.96,P = 0.021) compared with the wildtype homozygote(NN).The finding indicates that this germline variant in MET may decrease gastric cancer susceptibility in Han Chinese.