Publications by authors named "W Berkofsky-Fessler"

Article Synopsis
  • The ENIGMA research consortium focuses on determining the clinical significance of variants in hereditary breast and ovarian cancer genes, specifically BRCA1 and BRCA2, and evolved from an external expert panel to an internal Variant Curation Expert Panel (VCEP) to enhance alignment with FDA recognized classification processes.
  • The VCEP reviewed existing classification criteria and utilized statistical methods to assess evidence strength, testing new specifications on variants and updating documentation for better user clarity.
  • Analysis led to refined classifications for variants—resolving uncertainties and maintaining confidence in others—while revealing gaps in both ENIGMA's research and ACMG/AMP criteria, ultimately improving the classification process for BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants.
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Purpose: The identification of variants of uncertain significance (VUS) in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes by hereditary cancer testing poses great challenges for the clinical management of variant carriers. The ACMG/AMP (American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics/Association for Molecular Pathology) variant classification framework, which incorporates multiple sources of evidence, has the potential to establish the clinical relevance of many VUS. We sought to classify the clinical relevance of 133 single-nucleotide substitution variants encoding missense variants in the DNA-binding domain (DBD) of BRCA2 by incorporating results from a validated functional assay into an ACMG/AMP-variant classification model from a hereditary cancer-testing laboratory.

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Mobile element insertions (MEIs) contribute to genomic diversity, but they can be responsible for human disease in some cases. Initial clinical testing (, and ) in a 40-year-old female with unilateral breast cancer did not detect any pathogenic variants. Subsequent reanalysis for MEIs detected a novel likely pathogenic insertion of the retrotransposon element (RE) c.

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Purpose: To explore the role of TWEAK in tumor growth and antitumor immune response and the activity and mechanism of RG7212, an antagonistic anti-TWEAK antibody, in tumor models.

Experimental Design: TWEAK-induced signaling and gene expression were explored in tumor cell lines and inhibition of these effects and antitumor efficacy with RG7212 treatment was assessed in human tumor xenograft-, patient-derived xenograft, and syngeneic tumor models and phase I patients. Genetic features correlated with antitumor activity were characterized.

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Polycythemia vera (PV), essential thrombocythemia and primary myelofibrosis, are myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) with distinct clinical features and are associated with the JAK2V617F mutation. To identify genomic anomalies involved in the pathogenesis of these disorders, we profiled 87 MPN patients using Affymetrix 250K single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) arrays. Aberrations affecting chr9 were the most frequently observed and included 9pLOH (n=16), trisomy 9 (n=6) and amplifications of 9p13.

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