'Lo último en obesidad'. Este es el título del Simposio Internacional que organizamos en la Fundación Ramón Areces los días 1 y 2 de diciembre de 2015. En colaboración con la Fundación General CSIC, reunió a algunos de los mayores expertos en la materia para analizar cómo reducir este grave problema de salud pública.
4. Genetic Component
• In humans heritability of fat
mass = 40-70%
• Percentage heritability of fat
mass is very conserved across
species
• Different forms of obesity:
• Common “garden” variety obesity – complex trait;
• Extreme forms of obesity – Mendelian-like inheritance (<1% of prevalence of
obesity)
– Very early onset
– Degree of obesity much greater
– Likely to be more “genetically loaded” , i.e., rarer mutations of higher penetrance
5. Disease Gene Identification
• Loci for Mendelian forms of obesity found
– Severe early onset forms of obesity (leptin, leptin receptor, MC4R,
POMC, PCSK1, SIM1), syndromic forms of obesity (Bardet-Biedl,
Alstrom, etc.)
However…
• Complex Diseases (T2D, common obesity) > 10 years of little
progress
– Linkage and candidate gene studies did not yield many robustly
associated loci
– Studies were usually small and underpowered
– Statistically lenient
– Lots of “false positives”
6. Changing Genetic Approaches I
Family Linkage
ob/ob– leptin deficient mouse
Zhang et al. Nature, 1994
Human LEP
orthologue
Re-sequence in
affected individuals
Disease Gene
Mutation
Candidate
Gene
500K-1M variants
1K- 500K individuals
Populations or affected
(cases) – unaffected
(controls)
Variant association with disease
GWAS
7. Changing Genetic Approaches II
GWAS 1
GWAS 2
GWAS 3
GWAS…
Large Scale Meta-Analysis
International GWAS
Consortia + Denser/
Custom Arrays
GWAS+ Imputation
Dense Reference Panel
Whole-Exome and Whole-
Genome Sequencing
8. 2000 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 20092001
Genetic Landscape of Common Obesity pre-
GWAS
GWAS era begins
GWAS Meta-
Analysis era begins
Large-scale
custom arrays
available-
metabochip
2010
9. First Obesity Locus
Science, 2007
PLOS Genetics, 2007
Nature Genetics, 2007
No additional variants robustly
associated with BMI identified
10. Second Common
Obesity Locus
Nature Genetics, 2008
Required:
>16K samples in initial analysis;
replication in additional ~90K samples;
association study in population of
different ancestry
11. Obesity Genetic Loci
Post-GWAS Susceptibility loci for BMI/ obesity
increased from 0 to ~100
GWAS era
begins
GWAS Meta-
Analysis era begins
Large-scale
custom arrays
- metabochip
12. GWAS Catalogue Filtered Obesity
Data up to May 2014
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/gwas/home
• 39 Loci in the
catalogue;
• Since then total
number of BMI/
obesity
associated loci
~97
13. What have we learned?
Architecture: "the complex or carefully
designed structure of something”
Genetic Architecture
Biological Insights
Clinical Applications
14. Genetic Architecture
Blue – previously known
Red – new loci
• >90 loci to date
• Most are common alleles (MAF>5%)
with small effect sizes
• As sample sizes increase can detect
rarer alleles or those with even more
modest effects
• Most risk alleles map to non-coding
region of the genome
• FTO still largest effect size - ~16%
European population AA homozygous
~3kg heavier and 1.67- fold increased
odds obesity (BMI>30)Locke et al., 2015
17. Biological Insights
• Genes within BMI-associated loci are enriched for expression in brain and central
nervous system
• Suggests genes are important in central control of appetite and energy expenditure
• We see overlapping signals in loci mapping close to established genes involved in
monogenic/ severe obesity: MC4R, POMC, SH2B1 , BDNF, BBS4
Locke et al., 2015
19. Severe Early Onset Obesity
• More heritable
– More Mendelian-like
– Less time for environmental effects
– Identify genes with more penetrant alleles with larger
effects on phenotype
• Questions
– Is the genetic architecture of extreme obesity the same as
common obesity?
– Can it teach us something about genes/ pathways involved
in energy homeostasis more generally?
20. Severe Childhood Onset Obesity Project
(SCOOP)
• Clinical extremes
• BMI > 3 standard deviations
above the mean
• Age of onset < 10 years old
• UK white patients
• MC4R pre-screened in all
patients
• Additional known causes of
obesity excluded in some
patients
Collaborator: Sadaf Farooqi
22. Leptin Receptor Gene (LEPR)
• Known monogenic obesity
locus
• Intermediate frequency
allele (6% MAF in CEU
HapMap)
• Supports the idea that
both common and rare
variants can be involved in
the pathogenesis of
obesity at some loci
Wheeler et al., 2013
23. BMI loci in SCOOP
• BMI results from
Speliotes et al.
2010 (Nature
Genetics)
G ANTG ANT
C O N S O R T I U M
p < 5x10-8
5x10-8 ≤ p < 1x10-4
1x10-4 ≤ p < 0.01
0.01 ≤ p < 0.05
0.05 ≤ p < 1
Wheeler et al., 2013
24. UK10K
4,000 Cohort Samples
Whole Genome Sequenced
~6x depth
3,000 Autism and
Schizophrenia
2,000 Obesity 1,000 Rare Disease
6,000 Diseased Case Samples
Whole Exome Sequenced
~80x depth
1,000 Severe
Childhood Obesity
Aim: Investigate the role of additional low-
and rare-frequency variants in severe
obesity
25. LEP, LEPR: <1%
2 new
homozygous
LEPR mutations
8 different
heterozygous
coding NSN
variants
POMC: <1%
none
MC4R : 5%
none, but were
pre-screened
BDNF, TRKB : <1%
2 new de novo mutations
SIM1 : 1.8%
8 mutation carriers (1.4%)
(3 new mutations including
frameshift)
PC1/3: <1%
none
but 2 very rare
heterozygous
mutations
Mutations in the leptin-melanocortin pathway: UK10K
SH2B1: 1%
6 mutation carriers (1%)
(3 new mutations)
26. Clinical Applications
• For rare forms of obesity/ syndromic forms
– Diagnosis
– In very rare instances treatment (e.g. leptin)
• Common forms of obesity – translational impacts yet
to be fulfilled
• But….
• There are a couple of examples for proof-of-concept
from diabetes studies
27. Clinical Application I
• 12% of diabetes patients are
homozygous for TCF7L2
rs1225372 risk allele (TT);
• TT homozygous patients
have a ~2-fold greater
chance of not achieving
HbA1c <7% (i.e. fail
treatment) on sulfonylureas
than the 48% of GG patients
• Sulfonylurea first line of
treatment for T2D patients
first diagnosed
Sulfonylurea
Metformin
rs1225372
rs1225372
ProportionPatientswhoachievetargetHbA1c<7%
Pearson et al., 2007
TT
Knowledge of genotype at the TCF7L2
risk variant may influence treatment
choice
28. Clinical Applications II
• Loss-of-function mutations that protect against disease risk (without
other adverse effects) => validation for that gene as a target for
possible therapeutic inhibition
Flannick et al., 2014
Loss-of-function
mutations in SLC30A8
protect against T2D risk
=> New Possible Target
for Inhibition
29. What have we learned?
• Obesity Genetic Architecture
– Most risk alleles are common, have small effect sizes, and map outside
coding regions
– Some loci overlap with monogenic forms of disease
– Though there is overlap, there are also some differences between loci
influencing BMI and risk of severe obesity
– Role of rare variants still largely untested in sufficiently powered studies
• Important biological pathways
– Brain and central nervous system over represented in genes mapping within
BMI-associated loci
• Clinical application potential
– Some loci may influence response to treatment
– Some loci may become drug targets
– Genetic risk scores can be used to test disease aetiology and establish
causality between statistically associated traits
30. BUT….
• Majority of GWAS loci have limited predictive value
for clinical testing
– But this is changing…
• Even including loci that haven’t reached genome-
wide significance, much of the heritability still not
accounted for.
32. Barroso Lab
Jennifer Asimit
Bill Bottomley
Allan Daly
Ji Chen
Gaëlle Marenne
Rachel Moore
Felicity Payne
Fernando Riveros Mckay Aguilera
Neneh Sallah
Rachel Watson
Eleanor Wheeler
..and all patients and
study participants!!
All Sanger support
groups and pipelines
Wellcome Trust | MRC
Sadaf Farooqi
Steve O’Rahilly
G ANTG ANT
C O N S O R T I U M