Shared genetic susceptibility to breast cancer, brain tumors, and Fanconi anemia

Fanconi anemia is an inherited dis-ease characterized by bone marrow failure, congenital malformations, and predisposition to cancer. The breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2 was recently found to be as-sociated with Fanconi anemia comple-mentation group D1 (FA-D1). We ex-amined four kindreds afflicted with Fanconi anemia for the presence of germline BRCA2 mutations. One kin-dred, of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, had five members who were diag-nosed with breast cancer and two cousins who were BRCA2*6174delT