With the support of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), we formed the Consortium for the Genetic Analysis of Smoking Phenotypes (CGASP), which includes smoking, lung cancer, and COPD researchers, to enable the pursuit of several research goals. For this first analysis project we focused on the chromosome 15q25.1 region containing CHRNA5-CHRNA3-CHRNB4. Specifically, we focused on the four distinct loci discussed above, which have low correlation with each other and have demonstrated evidence for involvement in nicotine dependence. Analyses were undertaken to investigate two questions: first, are there multiple statistically distinct genetic loci in this region that exert independent effects on smoking, and second, are similar patterns of genetic risk shared across smoking, lung cancer, and COPD.
