ClinVar

Description

This variant is denoted BRCA2 c.7876T>C at the cDNA level, p.Trp2626Arg (W2626R) at the protein level, and results in the change of a Tryptophan to an Arginine (TGG>CGG) in exon 17. This variant was observed in at least one individual with breast cancer (Kim 2006). BRCA2 Trp2626Arg was not observed in approximately 6,500 individuals of European and African American ancestry in an external variant database, indicating it is not a common benign variant in these populations. Since Tryptophan and Arginine differ in polarity, charge, size or other properties, this is considered a non-conservative amino acid substitution. BRCA2 Trp2626Arg alters a position that is conserved across species and is located in the DNA-binding domain (Borg 2010). In silico analyses predict that this variant is probably damaging to protein structure and function. Another non-conservative missense substitution at this position, Trp2626Cys, has been observed in at least three women with a history of breast cancer and one child with Fanconi Anemia, was strongly predicted by Lindor et al. (2012) to be pathogenic based on tumor pathology, and has been showed to have impaired homologous recombination (Barber 2005, Borg 2010, Biswas 2011, Capanu 2011, Meyer 2012, Guidugli 2013). However, Biswas et al. (2011) found Trp2626Cys was able to rescue embryonic stem cell lethality although the rescued cells had reduced viability and Pruss et al. (2014) suggested that Trp2626Cys may be a lower penetrance or hypomorphic allele based on a clinical history weighting algorithm. Based on currently available information, we consider BRCA2 Trp2626Arg to be an expected pathogenic variant.