New breast cancer susceptibility gene found

Currently, only about 30% of the familial risk of breast cancer has been explained, leaving the substantial majority still unaccounted for. In a large collaborative study, they found that mutations in a gene called XRCC2, although rare, explain another proportion of breast cancers that run in families where there is no known genetic cause and that particularly occur at an early age. Read the IRAC News on April 18, 2012 here.