Obesity shapes selection for driver mutations in cancer.

ABSTRACT

Obesity is a leading risk factor for cancer, but whether obesity is linked to specific genomic subtypes of cancer is unknown. Here, we examined the relationship between obesity and tumor genotype in two large clinicogenomic corpora. Obesity was associated with specific driver mutations in lung adenocarcinoma, endometrial carcinoma, and cancers of unknown primary, independent of clinical covariates and genetic ancestry. Obesity is therefore a putative driver of etiologic heterogeneity across cancers.