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Yale study helps in understanding BRCA gene’s role in breast cancer
A mutation in one of two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, is a significant predictor of someone developing cancer, most notably breast cancer. However, little has been known about how BRCA performs its functions in the body’s cells.
Now, a Yale University-led study has increased knowledge about how the BRCA genes repair DNA and suppress tumors and why their mutation poses such a threat.
“They’re most well-known to be genes that prevent breast cancer, but they also suppress ovarian, prostate, pancreatic [cancer], and it goes on and on,” said Patrick Sung of the Yale Cancer Center, senior author of the paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature. “By the time a woman reaches the age of 70 there’s a one in eight, one in nine chance of a woman getting breast cancer. But if a woman has BRCA1 [mutation], the chance of getting breast cancer goes up to 80 percent.”
Source: Middletown Press