Rapid and cost effective screening of breast and ovarian cancer genes using novel sequence capture method in clinical samples.

BRCA1 and BRCA2 are two well-known genes in the background of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. There is also evidence that several other genes play an important role in the pathogenesis of these two malignancies. Latest population-scaled studies showed that certain mutations in different genes could cause similar risk elevation like BRCA2 mutations. In this study we present a new method to analyse the risk assessment of women to breast and ovarian cancer. Using Haloplex, a novel sequence capture method combined with next-generation sequencing we were able to perform rapid and cost-effective screening of 16 genes that could be associated with an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The rapid and cost effective analysis of this 16-gene cohort can reveal the genetic background of approximately 30 % of hereditary and familiar cases of breast and ovarian cancers. Thus, it opens up a new and high-throughput approach with fast turnaround time to the genetic diagnostics of these disorders and may be helpful to investigate other familial genetic disorders as well.