G C A T T A C G G C A T genes Review Literature Review of BARD1 as a Cancer Predisposing Gene with a Focus on Breast and Ovarian Cancers 1,2,3, 1,2, 1,2 1,2,4, Wejdan M. Alenezi y , Caitlin T. Fierheller y, Neil Recio and Patricia N. Tonin * 1 Department of Human Genetics, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0G4, Canada;
[email protected] (W.M.A.); caitlin.fi
[email protected] (C.T.F.);
[email protected] (N.R.) 2 Cancer Research Program, The Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, QC H4A 3J1, Canada 3 Department of Medical Laboratory Technology, Taibah University, Medina 42353, Saudi Arabia 4 Department of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0G4, Canada * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +1-514-934-1934 (ext. 44069) Contributed equally to the work. y Received: 30 June 2020; Accepted: 23 July 2020; Published: 27 July 2020 Abstract: Soon after the discovery of BRCA1 and BRCA2 over 20 years ago, it became apparent that not all hereditary breast and/or ovarian cancer syndrome families were explained by germline variants in these cancer predisposing genes, suggesting that other such genes have yet to be discovered. BRCA1-associated ring domain (BARD1), a direct interacting partner of BRCA1, was one of the earliest candidates investigated. Sequencing analyses revealed that potentially pathogenic BARD1 variants likely conferred a low–moderate risk to hereditary breast cancer, but this association is inconsistent. Here, we review studies of BARD1 as a cancer predisposing gene and illustrate the challenge of discovering additional cancer risk genes for hereditary breast and/or ovarian cancer.