Association between polymorphisms in microRNA target sites and survival in early‐stage non‐small cell lung cancer

A high‐throughput mapping method of RNA–RNA interactions by crosslinking, ligation, and sequencing of hybrids (CLASH) can not only provide information about canonical but also non‐canonical interactions. We evaluated the associations between variants in microRNA target sites using CLASH data and survival outcomes of 782 early‐stage non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients who underwent curative surgical resection. Among the 100 variants studied, two variants showed significant association with survival outcomes. The POLR2A rs2071504 C > T variant was associated with poor overall and disease‐free survival under a dominant model (hazard ratio [HR] 1.42, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.08–1.88; P = 0.01 and HR 1.34, 95% CI 1.08–1.67; P = 0.01, respectively). Patients carrying the NR2F6 rs2288539 TT genotype showed significantly better overall survival than those with the NR2F6 rs2288539 CC or CT genotypes (HR 0.13, 95% CI 0.02–0.90; P = 0.04). These findings suggest that POLR2A rs2071504 C > T and NR2F6 rs2288539 C > T can influence prognosis in early‐stage NSCLC patients.