Andrew Seto

M.Sc. Candidate, Department of Molecular & Medical Genetics

Identification of Cancer Susceptibility Genes through Genome-wide screen of Copy Number Variation in Early-onset Breast Cancer

The objective of my work is to identify and characterize novel genes in breast cancer that are involved in susceptibility and progression of cancer through in-depth and broad-spectrum molecular characterization. BRCA1 and BRCA2 have been identified as two cancer susceptibility genes implicated in hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. However, they do not account for all hereditary breast cancer and other genes are likely to be involved. We predict that some genes will be represented as copy number alteration in tumours from individuals with breast cancer. We plan to focus on a group of women with early-onset breast cancer whose disease is likely to be due to a hereditary component. High-density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping arrays will be utilized to characterize the whole genome of the somatic and germline tissue from each case to delineate copy number changes specific to the cancer.