Candidate gene association studies: successes and failures

Abstract

"Epidemiologic studies of twins indicate that 20-40% of common tumors such as breast, colorectal, and prostate cancers are inherited. However, the effect of high penetrance tumor susceptibility genes such as APC, BRCA1, BRAC2, MSH1, MLH2 and MSH6 only accounts for a small fraction of these cancers. Low to moderate penetrance tumor susceptibility genes likely account for the large remaining proportion of familial cancer risk...."