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Lookup NU author(s): Dr James Lordan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2021 Lippincott Williams and Wilkins. All rights reserved.Background: Approximately 25% of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) have been found to harbor rare mutations in disease-causing genes. To identify missing heritability in PAH, we integrated deep phenotyping with whole-genome sequencing data using Bayesian statistics. Methods: We analyzed 13 037 participants enrolled in the NBR study (NIHR BioResource-Rare Diseases), of which 1148 were recruited to the PAH domain. To test for genetic associations between genes and selected phenotypes of pulmonary hypertension, we used the Bayesian rare variant association method BeviMed. Results: Heterozygous, high impact, likely loss-of-function variants in the kinase insert domain receptor (KDR) gene were strongly associated with significantly reduced transfer coefficient for carbon monoxide (posterior probability=0.989) and older age at diagnosis (posterior probability=0.912). We also provide evidence for familial segregation of a rare nonsense KDR variant with these phenotypes. On computed tomographic imaging of the lungs, a range of parenchymal abnormalities were observed in the 5 patients harboring these predicted deleterious variants in KDR. Four additional PAH cases with rare likely loss-of-function variants in KDR were independently identified in the US PAH Biobank cohort with similar phenotypic characteristics. Conclusions: The Bayesian inference approach allowed us to independently validate KDR, which encodes for the VEGFR2 (vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2), as a novel PAH candidate gene. Furthermore, this approach specifically associated high impact likely loss-of-function variants in the genetically constrained gene with distinct phenotypes. These findings provide evidence for KDR being a clinically actionable PAH gene and further support the central role of the vascular endothelium in the pathobiology of PAH.
Author(s): Swietlik EM, Greene D, Zhu N, Megy K, Cogliano M, Rajaram S, Pandya D, Tilly T, Lutz KA, Welch CCL, Pauciulo MW, Southgate L, Martin JM, Treacy CM, Penkett CJ, Stephens JC, Bogaard HJ, Church C, Coghlan G, Coleman AW, Condliffe R, Eichstaedt CA, Eyries M, Gall H, Ghio S, Girerd B, Grunig E, Holden S, Howard L, Humbert M, Kiely DG, Kovacs G, Lordan J, Machado RD, Mackenzie Ross RV, McCabe C, Moledina S, Montani D, Olschewski H, Pepke-Zaba J, Price L, Rhodes CJ, Seeger W, Soubrier F, Suntharalingam J, Toshner MR, Vonk Noordegraaf A, Wharton J, Wild JM, Wort SJ, Lawrie A, Wilkins MR, Trembath RC, Shen Y, Chung WK, Swift AJ, Nichols WC, Morrell NW, Graf S
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine
Year: 2021
Volume: 14
Issue: 1
Print publication date: 01/02/2021
Online publication date: 15/12/2020
Acceptance date: 29/11/2020
Date deposited: 06/05/2021
ISSN (electronic): 2574-8300
Publisher: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins
URL: https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCGEN.120.003155
DOI: 10.1161/CIRCGEN.120.003155
PubMed id: 33320693
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