BRCA1 R841W: a strong candidate for a common mutation with moderate phenotype

BRCA1 mutations cause increased risk for breast and ovarian cancer, frequently of early onset. Many different mutations occur in BRCA1, including several examples of recurrent mutations, each of which accounts for a significant number of families with heritable cancer predisposition. These common mutations have an etiological role in many breast and ovarian cancer cases and provide the opportunity to examine genotype-phenotype correlations and genotype-environment interactions in individuals with the identical BRCA1 lesion. We report a novel missense change in BRCA1, 2640 C-->T (R841W), found in 3 cases from a subject group of 305 breast and 79 ovarian cancer cases from Orange County, CA. These are consecutive, population-based cases not selected for age or family history. In all three cases, there is a strong family history of breast, ovarian, or other cancers possibly related to a BRCA1 defect and family members showed a high concordance of cancer incidence with the presence of R841W. The age of cancer onset was not always distinct from typical sporadic cases. Testing of a sample of 413 unrelated individuals to examine the hypothesis that R841W might be a rare polymorphism detected one additional instance in a woman with breast cancer diagnosed at age 77 years, and cancer in one parent. R841W is likely to be an etiologically significant lesion with involvement in close to 1% (95% confidence interval of 0-1.7%) of all breast and ovarian cancers in this population.