Publications by authors named "William J Tapper"

Article Synopsis
  • 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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  • 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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Mosaic loss of the Y-chromosome (LOY) in peripheral blood leukocytes is the most common somatic alteration in men and linked to wide range of malignant and nonmalignant conditions. LOY is associated with age, smoking, and constitutional genetics. Here, we aimed to assess the relationships between LOY, serum biomarkers, and clonal hematopoiesis (CH).

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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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Background: Low-frequency variants play an important role in breast cancer (BC) susceptibility. Gene-based methods can increase power by combining multiple variants in the same gene and help identify target genes.

Methods: We evaluated the potential of gene-based aggregation in the Breast Cancer Association Consortium cohorts including 83,471 cases and 59,199 controls.

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Article Synopsis
  • Many variants found in disease susceptibility genes are classified as variants of uncertain significance (VUS), making their interpretation critical for clinical decisions.
  • This study introduces a new likelihood ratio-based method that takes into account gene-specific age-related penetrance to better analyze the pathogenicity of these variants.
  • The method outperformed traditional approaches in simulated and real datasets, allowing for clearer classifications of variants as pathogenic or non-pathogenic for conditions like breast cancer, and includes user-friendly tools for researchers.
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  • - The study investigates the causal relationship between physical activity, sedentary behavior, and breast cancer risk using Mendelian randomization, analyzing data from over 130,000 European women.
  • - Findings suggest that higher levels of genetic predisposition to physical activity are linked to a significantly lower overall breast cancer risk, particularly for pre/perimenopausal cases, while increased sedentary time correlates with a higher risk of certain types of tumors.
  • - The results are consistent across various test groups and indicate that promoting physical activity and reducing sedentary behavior might be beneficial in mitigating breast cancer risks.
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Background & Aims: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is known to be associated with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), particularly new-onset DM (NODM). Others have developed polygenic risk scores (PRS) associated with PDAC risk. We aimed to compare the performance of these PRS in an independent cohort to determine if they can discriminate between NODM and long-standing DM patients with PDAC.

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Genome-wide and epigenome-wide association studies have identified genetic variants and differentially methylated nucleotides associated with childhood asthma. Incorporation of such genomic data may improve performance of childhood asthma prediction models which use phenotypic and environmental data. Using genome-wide genotype and methylation data at birth from the Isle of Wight Birth Cohort ( = 1456), a polygenic risk score (PRS), and newborn (nMRS) and childhood (cMRS) methylation risk scores, were developed to predict childhood asthma diagnosis.

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Background: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified multiple common breast cancer susceptibility variants. Many of these variants have differential associations by estrogen receptor (ER) status, but how these variants relate with other tumor features and intrinsic molecular subtypes is unclear.

Methods: Among 106,571 invasive breast cancer cases and 95,762 controls of European ancestry with data on 173 breast cancer variants identified in previous GWAS, we used novel two-stage polytomous logistic regression models to evaluate variants in relation to multiple tumor features (ER, progesterone receptor (PR), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) and grade) adjusting for each other, and to intrinsic-like subtypes.

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Background: Respiratory symptoms are common in early life and often transient. It is difficult to identify in which children these will persist and result in asthma. Machine learning (ML) approaches have the potential for better predictive performance and generalisability over existing childhood asthma prediction models.

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We sought to determine the relationship between age-related clonal hematopoiesis (CH) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). CH, defined as mosaic chromosome abnormalities (mCA) and/or driver mutations was identified in 5449 (2.9%) eligible UK Biobank participants (n = 190,487 median age = 58 years).

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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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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the possible causal relationship between cigarette smoking and breast cancer risk using Mendelian randomization techniques.
  • Results indicate that a genetically predicted lifetime smoking index (LSI) is linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, while the number of cigarettes smoked per day (CPD) does not show a significant association.
  • The findings suggest that long-term smoking exposure may increase breast cancer risk, but the intensity of smoking does not appear to have the same effect.
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A combination of genetic and functional approaches has identified three independent breast cancer risk loci at 2q35. A recent fine-scale mapping analysis to refine these associations resulted in 1 (signal 1), 5 (signal 2), and 42 (signal 3) credible causal variants at these loci. We used publicly available in silico DNase I and ChIP-seq data with in vitro reporter gene and CRISPR assays to annotate signals 2 and 3.

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Article Synopsis
  • A correction has been issued for the paper referenced by the DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-23162-4.
  • The correction addresses specific errors or inaccuracies found in the original research.
  • Readers are encouraged to review the correction to understand the updated findings and implications.
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Breast cancer (BC) risk for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers varies by genetic and familial factors. About 50 common variants have been shown to modify BC risk for mutation carriers. All but three, were identified in general population studies.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Mastocytosis is a rare blood disorder marked by an excessive number of mast cells, often linked to the KIT D816V mutation found in over 80% of patients.
  • - A genome-wide association study involving 1,035 mastocytosis patients and 17,960 healthy controls identified three significant genetic variants (SNPs) associated with the disease, which could help explain its development.
  • - Analysis revealed that one of these SNPs, rs4616402, influences the expression of a gene important for blood cell development, while the functions of the other two SNPs remain less understood, highlighting potential genetic risk factors for mastocytosis.
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Ciliopathies are a broad range of inherited developmental and degenerative diseases associated with structural or functional defects in motile or primary non-motile cilia. There are around 200 known ciliopathy disease genes and whilst genetic testing can provide an accurate diagnosis, 24-60% of ciliopathy patients who undergo genetic testing do not receive a genetic diagnosis. This is partly because following current guidelines from the American College of Medical Genetics and the Association for Molecular Pathology, it is difficult to provide a confident clinical diagnosis of disease caused by missense or non-coding variants, which account for more than one-third of cases of disease.

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Previous research has shown that polygenic risk scores (PRSs) can be used to stratify women according to their risk of developing primary invasive breast cancer. This study aimed to evaluate the association between a recently validated PRS of 313 germline variants (PRS) and contralateral breast cancer (CBC) risk. We included 56,068 women of European ancestry diagnosed with first invasive breast cancer from 1990 onward with follow-up from the Breast Cancer Association Consortium.

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Purpose: Checkpoint kinase 2 () is frequently included in multigene panels. We describe the associated outcomes among carriers of pathogenic variants in young patients with symptomatic breast cancer.

Patients And Methods: Participants (N = 2,344) in the Prospective Outcomes in Sporadic Versus Hereditary Breast Cancer study had a diagnosis of primary invasive breast cancer at age ≤ 40 years.

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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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