Publications by authors named "Valerie Rhenius"

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  • * Analysis of data from over 55,000 breast cancer patients showed that co-observation of variants in BRCA1, BRCA2, and PALB2 with other breast cancer genes occurred less frequently than expected, suggesting a potential correlation with pathogenicity.
  • * The findings indicate that identifying a variant of uncertain significance alongside a known pathogenic variant supports evidence against the variant's pathogenicity, which could improve variant classification in clinical settings and for other genetic conditions.
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  • Light-at-night exposure is linked to decreased melatonin production from the pineal gland and is considered a potential risk factor for breast cancer by the IARC.
  • A study of 44,405 women examined the relationship between breast cancer risk and genetic variations (SNPs) associated with melatonin synthesis and signaling, using logistic regression for analysis.
  • Significant findings included 10 SNPs in the TPH2 gene and one in the MAPK8 gene, suggesting that these genetic factors may influence breast cancer risk, particularly in relation to circadian disruptions caused by light exposure at night.
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  • A genome-wide study explored gene-environment interactions (G×E) to identify variants that could impact breast cancer risk, analyzing data from around 72,285 breast cancer cases and 80,354 controls.
  • Researchers found two specific SNP-risk factor pairs that showed a significant association with breast cancer risk, including variations related to adult height and age at menarche.
  • Overall, the study concluded that G×E interactions contribute minimally to the heritability of breast cancer and don't significantly enhance risk prediction for the disease.
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  • Polygenic risk scores (PRSs), derived from genome-wide association studies (GWASs), can enhance breast cancer risk evaluation but are primarily based on European populations.
  • This study analyzed the effectiveness of European-based PRS models in identifying breast cancer risk among Ashkenazi Jewish women in Israel using data from two cohorts.
  • Results indicated that these PRS models successfully identified Ashkenazi Jewish women at high risk for breast cancer, suggesting they could improve risk assessment in this group.
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  • * The study revealed significant variation in the prevalence of four common PTVs across different regions in Europe, with p.Gln1701* being most common in Northern Europe and p.Gly1906Alafs*12 most common in Southern Europe.
  • * Findings suggest that the distribution of rare PTVs is more heterogeneous in Southwestern and Central Europe compared to Northeastern Europe, which will aid in crafting targeted genetic testing for breast cancer in specific European populations.
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  • Breast cancer patients with the CHEK2 c.1100delC variant have a heightened risk of developing a second breast cancer (contralateral breast cancer) and generally experience worse survival outcomes compared to those without the variant.
  • A study involving over 82,000 women aimed to evaluate how the CHEK2 variant, radiotherapy, and systemic treatments affect the risk of contralateral breast cancer and breast cancer-specific survival.
  • Findings indicated that while systemic therapy (especially the combination of chemotherapy and endocrine therapy) lowers the risk of contralateral breast cancer, CHEK2 c.1100delC carriers still faced poorer survival rates, suggesting other factors at play beyond the risk of developing a second cancer.*
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  • - The study investigated the links between genetic variants in breast cancer susceptibility genes (besides BRCA1, BRCA2, and CHEK2) and risks of developing contralateral breast cancer (CBC) and breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) in 34,401 women of European ancestry who had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
  • - Significant findings revealed that protein-truncating variants (PTVs) and certain missense variants (MSVs) in genes like BRCA1, BRCA2, TP53, CHEK2, and PALB2 were associated with higher CBC risk and negative impacts on BCSS, indicating that these genetic factors play a crucial role in cancer outcomes.
  • - The results showed minimal
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Breast cancer (BC) patients with a germline c.1100delC variant have an increased risk of contralateral BC (CBC) and worse BC-specific survival (BCSS) compared to non-carriers. We aimed to assess the associations of c.

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Evidence from literature, including the BRIDGES study, indicates that germline protein truncating variants (PTVs) in FANCM confer moderately increased risk of ER-negative and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), especially for women with a family history of the disease. Association between FANCM missense variants (MVs) and breast cancer risk has been postulated. In this study, we further used the BRIDGES study to test 689 FANCM MVs for association with breast cancer risk, overall and in ER-negative and TNBC subtypes, in 39,885 cases (7566 selected for family history) and 35,271 controls of European ancestry.

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Background: Given the high heterogeneity among breast tumors, associations between common germline genetic variants and survival that may exist within specific subgroups could go undetected in an unstratified set of breast cancer patients.

Methods: We performed genome-wide association analyses within 15 subgroups of breast cancer patients based on prognostic factors, including hormone receptors, tumor grade, age, and type of systemic treatment. Analyses were based on 91,686 female patients of European ancestry from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium, including 7531 breast cancer-specific deaths over a median follow-up of 8.

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  • The study examined modifiable lifestyle factors affecting survival after invasive breast cancer across various subtypes.
  • Analysis of data from over 121,000 women indicated strong links between all-cause mortality and factors like BMI, smoking, and physical activity, with no significant differences based on breast cancer subtype.
  • The findings suggest that lifestyle changes could play a role in improving survival outcomes, and these associations may aid in patient care strategies without substantial subtype variations.
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Background: Genetic testing for breast cancer susceptibility is widely used, but for many genes, evidence of an association with breast cancer is weak, underlying risk estimates are imprecise, and reliable subtype-specific risk estimates are lacking.

Methods: We used a panel of 34 putative susceptibility genes to perform sequencing on samples from 60,466 women with breast cancer and 53,461 controls. In separate analyses for protein-truncating variants and rare missense variants in these genes, we estimated odds ratios for breast cancer overall and tumor subtypes.

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Background: PTEN loss is a putative driver in histotypes of ovarian cancer (high-grade serous (HGSOC), endometrioid (ENOC), clear cell (CCOC), mucinous (MOC), low-grade serous (LGSOC)). We aimed to characterise PTEN expression as a biomarker in epithelial ovarian cancer in a large population-based study.

Methods: Tumours from 5400 patients from a multicentre observational, prospective cohort study of the Ovarian Tumour Tissue Analysis Consortium were used to evaluate associations between immunohistochemical PTEN patterns and overall survival time, age, stage, grade, residual tumour, CD8+ tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) counts, expression of oestrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and androgen receptor (AR) by means of Cox proportional hazard models and generalised Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel tests.

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Purpose: Gene expression-based molecular subtypes of high-grade serous tubo-ovarian cancer (HGSOC), demonstrated across multiple studies, may provide improved stratification for molecularly targeted trials. However, evaluation of clinical utility has been hindered by nonstandardized methods, which are not applicable in a clinical setting. We sought to generate a clinical grade minimal gene set assay for classification of individual tumor specimens into HGSOC subtypes and confirm previously reported subtype-associated features.

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In breast cancer, high levels of homeobox protein Hox-B13 (HOXB13) have been associated with disease progression of ER-positive breast cancer patients and resistance to tamoxifen treatment. Since HOXB13 p.G84E is a prostate cancer risk allele, we evaluated the association between HOXB13 germline mutations and breast cancer risk in a previous study consisting of 3,270 familial non-BRCA1/2 breast cancer cases and 2,327 controls from the Netherlands.

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Breast cancer is a common disease partially caused by genetic risk factors. Germline pathogenic variants in DNA repair genes , , , , and are associated with breast cancer risk. , which encodes for a DNA translocase, has been proposed as a breast cancer predisposition gene, with greater effects for the ER-negative and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) subtypes.

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Article Synopsis
  • A large meta-analysis examined how germline variants impact breast cancer mortality in women of European ancestry, analyzing data from around 96,661 patients.
  • The study used data from approximately 10.4 million variants and found that no variant was strongly associated with breast cancer-specific mortality, although a couple of variants on chromosome 7 showed some significance for ER-positive and ER-negative breast cancer.
  • The findings suggest that while there are specific genetic variants related to breast cancer outcomes, there is still a significant challenge in using genetic information to predict mortality in breast cancer patients.
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Stratification of women according to their risk of breast cancer based on polygenic risk scores (PRSs) could improve screening and prevention strategies. Our aim was to develop PRSs, optimized for prediction of estrogen receptor (ER)-specific disease, from the largest available genome-wide association dataset and to empirically validate the PRSs in prospective studies. The development dataset comprised 94,075 case subjects and 75,017 control subjects of European ancestry from 69 studies, divided into training and validation sets.

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The breast cancer risk variants identified in genome-wide association studies explain only a small fraction of the familial relative risk, and the genes responsible for these associations remain largely unknown. To identify novel risk loci and likely causal genes, we performed a transcriptome-wide association study evaluating associations of genetically predicted gene expression with breast cancer risk in 122,977 cases and 105,974 controls of European ancestry. We used data from the Genotype-Tissue Expression Project to establish genetic models to predict gene expression in breast tissue and evaluated model performance using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas.

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Most non- breast cancer families have no identified genetic cause. We used linkage and haplotype analyses in familial and sporadic breast cancer cases to identify a susceptibility locus on chromosome 6q. Two independent genome-wide linkage analysis studies suggested a 3 Mb locus on chromosome 6q and two unrelated Swedish families with a LOD >2 together seemed to share a haplotype in 6q14.

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Breast cancer risk is influenced by rare coding variants in susceptibility genes, such as BRCA1, and many common, mostly non-coding variants. However, much of the genetic contribution to breast cancer risk remains unknown. Here we report the results of a genome-wide association study of breast cancer in 122,977 cases and 105,974 controls of European ancestry and 14,068 cases and 13,104 controls of East Asian ancestry.

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Most common breast cancer susceptibility variants have been identified through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of predominantly estrogen receptor (ER)-positive disease. We conducted a GWAS using 21,468 ER-negative cases and 100,594 controls combined with 18,908 BRCA1 mutation carriers (9,414 with breast cancer), all of European origin. We identified independent associations at P < 5 × 10 with ten variants at nine new loci.

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Breast cancer risks conferred by many germline missense variants in the and genes, often referred to as variants of uncertain significance (VUS), have not been established. In this study, associations between 19 BRCA1 and 33 BRCA2 missense substitution variants and breast cancer risk were investigated through a breast cancer case-control study using genotyping data from 38 studies of predominantly European ancestry (41,890 cases and 41,607 controls) and nine studies of Asian ancestry (6,269 cases and 6,624 controls). The BRCA2 c.

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  • The study investigates the CHEK2 missense mutation p.I157T in breast cancer patients, finding it linked to a slight increase in risk but not associated with worse survival compared to another mutation, c.1100delC.
  • The analysis involved comparing tumor characteristics and survival outcomes of 26,801 European female breast cancer patients, focusing on those with p.I157T, c.1100delC, and non-carriers.
  • Results show that p.I157T carriers have favorable tumor features and prognosis, aligning with the luminal A subtype, indicating that this mutation may not significantly impact survival or increase aggressive cancer traits.
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Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have revealed increased breast cancer risk associated with multiple genetic variants at 5p12. Here, we report the fine mapping of this locus using data from 104,660 subjects from 50 case-control studies in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC). With data for 3,365 genotyped and imputed SNPs across a 1 Mb region (positions 44,394,495-45,364,167; NCBI build 37), we found evidence for at least three independent signals: the strongest signal, consisting of a single SNP rs10941679, was associated with risk of estrogen-receptor-positive (ER) breast cancer (per-g allele OR ER = 1.

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