Genetic variants that may cause breast cancer, with Dr. Fergus Couch

My guest is Dr. Fergus Couch who is, among many other roles, Professor and Chair of the Division of Experimental Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Couch works on the genetics of breast cancer, discovering and understanding the connections of inherited genetic variance in cancer susceptibility genes. He's also a BCRF Grand Tee since 2007. Dr. Couch has more than 300 publications, but the one we focused on came just a few months ago and it was an incredibly big deal.

The outcomes were published in the prestigious publications Nature and Nature Genetics. Dr. Fergus and other scientists reported findings by a major international consortium identifying an incredible 65 previously unknown common genetic variants that predisposed individuals to breast cancer. They also found seven others that are specific for triple negative breast cancer, the highly aggressive forms of the disease. In all, that's 72 new genetic variants that contribute to breast cancer risk. The numbers that drove the research are remarkable. Over 500 researchers, from 300 institutions, in six continents contributed genetic data from some 275,000 women, 146,000 of whom had been diagnosed with breast cancer.