Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in Korean women. Germline mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes cause hereditary breast cancer and are detected in 15-20% of hereditary breast cancer. We investigated the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations in 114 familial breast cancer patients using next-generation sequencing. We confirmed 20 different mutations of BRCA1 and BRCA2 in 25 subjects (21.9%). Two such mutations in eight patients were novel (not reported in any variant database or previous study). Six mutations have been reported as disease-causing mutations in public databases. Seven mutations were found only in a single nucleotide polymorphism database and one mutation has been reported in Korea. The BRCA1/2 mutation frequency was similar to that of other studies on familial breast cancer patients in the Korean population. Further studies should examine more cases and mutations of whole exons.
Keywords: BRCA1 Protein; BRCA2 Protein; Breast Neoplasms; Mutation.