DNA Methylation as a heritable risk factor for breast cancer

We and many others over the last few decades have contributed to a now much improved understanding of the genomic components of familial risk for breast cancer and the implementation/clinical translation of this information. However, up to 50% of the familial risk remains unexplained. This project sits in our research program that is pursuing an alternative line of investigation of heritable breast cancer risk factors. DNA methylation marks can act in analogous ways to germline genomic variants in regard to cancer predisposition and explain some of the as yet unexplained familial risk. Our program is systematically assessing DNA methylation as a heritable risk factor for breast cancer. This work has established a substantial population-based dataset that identified DNA methylation marks that are heritable and associated with breast cancer risk. This project will extend this work into family-based studies that will applying new innovative epigenomic methods (including laboratory bench work and/or bioinformatics) to identify and characterise heritable (intergenerational) DNA methylation marks associated with breast cancer risk.