A Mayo Clinic research team says it has identified a group of genes that are associated with an increased risk of developing triple-negative breast cancer. Any finding that may lead to better screening for triple-negative breast cancer is a big deal. "Everybody is nervous about triple-negative breast cancer," says Dr. Marleen Meyers, a medical oncologist at NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center, "because, of all the breast cancers, it is considered the most aggressive type, and it is the most difficult to treat."
Triple-negative breast cancer can not be treated using targeted therapies, it has a high risk of recurrence and a poor five-year survival rate. The researchers hope the findings will provide a basis for better risk management. After testing more than 10,000 people with triple-negative breast cancer, researchers found that alterations in BARD1, BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB2 and RAD51D genes were associated with a higher risk for triple-negative breast cancer and a greater than 20% lifetime risk for overall breast cancer among Caucasians. They observed a similar trend in African-Americans.
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