New Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Gene: RAD51C

In a paper published online over the weekend in Nature Genetics, Alfons Meindl and colleagues demonstrated that rare monoallelic mutations in the gene RAD51C (which is also newly implicated in Fanconi anemia-like disorder when biallelic mutations are present) confer increased risk for breast and ovarian cancer.  It's too early to really know for sure, but it appears that mutations in this gene may behave somewhat similarly to those in BRCA2 (in terms of high penetrance, the Fanconi anemia pathway connection, etc.).