O100 : The hepatic microenvironment induces a CSC phenotype and determines the prognosis of HCC patients

Common variants in the HLA-DQ region confer susceptibility to idiopathic achalasia

Idiopathic achalasia is characterized by a failure of the lower esophageal sphincter to relax due to a loss of neurons in the myenteric plexus(1,2). This ultimately leads to massive dilatation and an irreversibly impaired megaesophagus. We performed a genetic association study in 1,068 achalasia cases and 4,242 controls and fine-mapped a strong MHC association signal by imputing classical HLA haplotypes and amino acid polymorphisms. An eight-residue insertion at position 227-234 in the cytoplasmic tail of HLA-DQ beta 1 (encoded by HLA-DQB1*05:03 and HLA-DQB1*06:01) confers the strongest risk for achalasia (P = 1.73 x 10(-19)). In addition, two amino acid substitutions in the. extracellular …

Ginkgo biloba induces different gene expression signatures of oncogenic pathways in malignant and non-malignant cells in the liver

Genome-wide Association Study and Meta-Analysis Identify ISL1 as Genome-wide Significant Susceptibility Gene for Bladder Exstrophy

The bladder exstrophy-epispadias complex (BEEC) represents the severe end of the uro-rectal malformation spectrum, and is thought to result from aberrant embryonic morphogenesis of the cloacal membrane and the urorectal septum. The most common form of BEEC is isolated classic bladder exstrophy (CBE). To identify susceptibility loci for CBE, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 110 CBE patients and 1,177 controls of European origin. Here, an association was found with a region of approximately 220kb on chromosome 5q11.1. This region harbors the ISL1 (ISL LIM homeobox 1) gene. Multiple markers in this region showed evidence for association with CBE, including 84 markers with…