Notebook

HERE WE GO AGAIN: More breast cancer genes are likely, says Duke's Futreal.

A recent report in Nature Genetics (C. Phelan et al., 13:120-2, 1996) suggests that mutations in BRCA2, the second breast cancer susceptibility gene identified, may not be involved in as many cases of inherited breast cancer as first thought, but it may play a role in some pancreatic cancers. At the same time, the work implies that a third breast cancer gene-and perhaps more-may lurk in human DNA. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C., studied 49 families with inherited breast cancers unlikely to have mutations in the BRCA1 gene, the initial breast cancer susceptibility gene uncovered in 1994. Together, BRCA1 and BRCA2 are thought to be responsible for about 90 percent of the 5 percent to 10 percent of breast cancers that...