Abstract
This study aims to investigate the POLE and POLD1 germline exonuclease domain pathogenic variants in Middle Eastern CRCs. In our cohort, low frequency of exonuclease domain pathogenic variants (0.44%) was identified in 1,135 CRC cases. Furthermore, low expression of POLE and POLD1 showed significant association with lymph node involvement (
p
= .0184), grade 3 tumors (
p
= .0139) and adenocarcinoma histology (
p
= .0164), larger tumor size (T3 and T4 tumors;
p
= .0012), stage III tumors (
p
= .0341) respectively. POLE and POLD1 can be included in multi‐gene panels to screen CRC patients.