NCI Awards MD Anderson Researcher $4.1M for Ovarian Cancer Sequencing Study | GenomeWeb

NCI 
 Aug 28, 2015

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The National Cancer Institute has recently awarded a five-year, $4.1 million grant to MD Anderson Cancer Center researcher Michelle Hildebrandt to conduct a large-scale sequencing study to identify rare genomic variants associated with inherited ovarian cancer susceptibility.
Through genome-wide association studies, Hildebrandt and collaborators have identified 11 loci associated with ovarian cancer risk and plan to publish an additional six in the coming months, she wrote in her grant's abstract.
"However, these variants combined only explain less than 5 percent of the heritable risk of ovarian cancer," she noted, adding that even when BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations are taken into account, about 60 percent of familial ovarian cancer cases are unresolved.

.... Given the well-established differences in prognosis between European and African American ovarian cancer patients, Hildebrandt will also sequence the top candidate genes identified in the first experiments in an ongoing study of African American women with the disease.....