Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 9, 2025

Establishing a Competing Risk Regression Nomogram Model for Survival Data
Published on: October 23, 2020
Implementing the Risk Stratification and Clinical Management of Breast Cancer Families Using Polygenic Risk Score
Barbara Rizzacasa1, Vanessa Nicolì1, Chantal Tancredi1
1Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", 00133 Rome, Italy.
Background:
The identification of women at high risk of breast cancer (BC) is crucial for personalized screening strategies. Pathogenic and likely pathogenic variants (PVs/LPVs) in susceptibility risk genes explain part of the individual risk. Moreover, a polygenic background, summarized as a polygenic risk score (PRS), contributes to the risk of BC and may modify the individual risk in carrier and non-carrier members of BC families.
Methods:
We performed a retrospective pilot study evaluating PRS in women from a subset of high- (BRCA1 and BRCA2) and moderate-risk (PALB2 and ATM) BC families. We included PVs/LPVs carriers and non-carriers and evaluated a PRS based on 577,113 BC-associated variants. Using BOADICEA, we calculated the adjusted lifetime BC risk.
Results:
Our data showed that in BRCA1/BRCA2 carriers, PVs have a major role in stratifying the lifetime risk, while PRS improves risk estimation in non-carriers of these families. A different scenario may be observed in PALB2 and ATM families where PRS combined with PV/LPV carrier status gives a more informative lifetime risk.
Conclusions:
This study showed that in BC families, the PRS might help to quantify the weight of the genetic familial background, improving the individual risk stratification and contributing to personalized clinical management for carrier and non-carrier women.
More Related Videos
06:46Competing-Risk Nomogram for Predicting Cancer-Specific Survival in Multiple Primary Colorectal Cancer Patients after Surgery
Published on: September 27, 2024
08:15gDNA Enrichment by a Transposase-based Technology for NGS Analysis of the Whole Sequence of BRCA1, BRCA2, and 9 Genes Involved in DNA Damage Repair
Published on: October 6, 2014
Related Concept Videos
Cancer Survival Analysis
Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast,...
Combination Therapies and Personalized Medicine
The combination of the drug acetazolamide and sulforaphane is a good example of combination therapy to treat cancer. The cells in the interior of a large tumor often die due to the hypoxic and...