Absence of rearrangements in the BRCA2 gene in human cancers

Mutations of BRCA2 in sporadic breast and ovarian carcinomas are exceedingl y rare. This led to the suggestion that large genomic rearrangements could be involved. We performed Southern blots in genomic DNA from 130 primary br east cancers and 83 cancer cell lines (breast, ovarian. pancreatic and smal l cell lung carcinomas) and found no genomic rearrangements. These results suggest that a gene other than BRCA2 is the target of the frequent 13q12.3 allelic deletions in human cancers. (C) 2001 Cancer Research Campaign.