Although alterations in PI3K, TGF-Beta, and RTK/RAS pathways were not statistically significant, borderline significance was observed in genes related to these pathways, including EGFR ( p = 0.07), FGFR1 ( p = 0.05), FGFR2 ( p = 0.05), and PTPN11 ( p = 0.05) in the PI3K pathway and SMAD4 ( p = 0.08) in the TGF-Beta pathway.
Borderline significant differences were noted in the WNT pathway when comparing GC in H/L patients to NHW GC patients, with WNT alterations more frequent in H/L GC (8.4% vs. 4%, p = 0.08) and APC mutations being significantly higher (3.6% vs. 0.8%, p = 0.05).
Although alterations in the PI3K, TGF-Beta, and RTK/RAS pathways did not reach statistical significance, several genes within these pathways exhibited borderline significance, hinting at possible ethnicity-related differences in mutation profiles.
Although WNT pathway alterations were not statistically significant, they were observed at a higher frequency in H/L patients (8.4%) compared to NHW patients (4.0%, p = 0.08674), suggesting a possible trend that warrants further investigation.
In contrast, WNT pathway alterations in NHW GC patients showed a slight trend toward reduced survival compared to those without alterations ( Figure S1 ).
Similarly, the median TMB was lower in H/L patients (0.865 mutations/Mb, IQR: 0.865–1.73) compared to NHW patients (1.6 mutations/Mb, IQR: 0.9–2.2), with a highly significant p -value of 0.00175.