Susceptibility to breast cancer, common and rare: How far have we got and where next? - Douglas Easton, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar

DCEG Events

March 7, 2017 | 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM

NCI Shady Grove Rockville, Maryland

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Speaker

Douglas Easton, Ph.D.
University Professor of Genetic Epidemiology, Department of Public Health and Primary Care and Department of Oncology, University of Cambridge; Director, CR-UK Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology, University of Cambridge; and Honorary Co-Director, Strangeways Research Laboratory, Cambridge

Host

Montserrat Garcia-Closas, M.D., Dr.P.H., Deputy Director, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, NCI

Description

Over the past decade our understanding of the genetic basis of breast cancer has been radically transformed, notably through large-scale genome-wide association studies and targeted sequencing, combined with genomic and functional analysis. These studies have revealed that susceptibility to breast cancer is conferred by a large number of common variants, predominantly in regulatory regions, together with rarer coding variants in BRCA1, BRCA2, ATM, CHEK2, and PALB2 that confer higher risks. Dr. Easton will discuss progress in unravelling the responsible genes and some of the implications for risk prediction and prevention of breast cancer.