Breast Cancer Risk Pathways

We sought to identify genomic variants that differed between individuals who developed familial breast cancer and individuals who had a family history of breast cancer but who had not developed breast cancer. We aggregated these data at the pathway level to identify pathways that play a role in familial breast cancer development. We profiled peripheral blood cells, extracted DNA, and sequenced the DNA using exome-capture sequencing to identify genomic variants in these samples. For 34 of the 35 samples, we also profiled peripheral blood using Affymetrix Human Exon 1.0 ST Array microarrays. Those data can be found in Gene Expression Omnibus under accession identifier GSE47862.]]> Individuals who were included in this study had at least one first degree relative who had developed breast cancer. Cases and controls were matched by age such that the ages of the controls were similar to the ages of the cases. Approximately half of the included participants carried known pathogenic variants in either BRCA1 or BRCA2. The remaining participants did not carry a known pathogenic variant of these genes (“BRCAX”). All participants were female.]]>