PUNISHER rs12318065 C > A transversion: a putative somatic driver mutation for poor prognosis in colon cancer

Objective: Colon cancer (CC) remains one of the leading causes of cancer death worldwide. Several mutations/polymorphisms have been implicated in CC development and/or progression. The role of the recently identified variants related to the long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) family has not yet been fully uncovered. In this sense, we aimed to explore the association between the lncRNA PUNISHER rs12318065 variant and the CC risk and/or prognosis. Methods: A total of 408 CC (paired 204 cancer/non-cancer) tissues were genotyped using the TaqMan allelic discrimination assay. Results: "A" variant was associated with higher susceptibility to develop CC under heterozygote (A/C vs. C/C: OR = 1.39, 95%CI = 1.09-2.17, P=0.002), homozygote (A/A vs. C/C: OR = 2.63, 95%CI = 1.51-4.58, P=0.001), dominant (A/C-A/A vs. C/C: OR = 1.72, 95%CI = 1.15-02.57, P=0.008), and recessive (A/A vs. C/C-A/C: OR = 2.23, 95%CI = 1.34-3.72, P=0.001) models. Patients with metastasis were more likely to harbor A/A and A/C genotypes (16.7% and 14.1%) than 11% with the C/C genotype (P=0.027). Patients harboring C > A somatic mutation were more likely to develop relapse (52.6% vs. 26.5%, P=0.003), have poor survival (57.9% vs. 27.7%, P=0.001), and have shorter disease-free survival (43.2 +/- 2.6 months vs. 56.8 +/- 1.29 months, P < 0.001) and overall survival (49.6 +/- 2.4 months vs. 56.6 +/- 0.99 months, P < 0.001). Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that patients with distal metastasis and C > A somatic mutation were three times more likely to die. Conclusions: To our knowledge, the present study is the first to identify that the PUNISHER rs12318065 variant could be a novel putative driver of colon cancer and is associated with poor prognosis.