Male Breast Cancer: Results of the Application of Multigene Panel Testing to an Italian Cohort of Patients.

Male breast cancer (MBC) is a rare tumor, accounting for less than 1% of all breast cancers. In MBC, genetic predisposition plays an important role; however, only a few studies have investigated in depth the role of genes other than and . We performed a Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) analysis with a panel of 94 cancer predisposition genes on germline DNA from an Italian case series of 70 patients with MBC. Moreover, we searched for large deletions/duplications of genes through the Multiplex Ligation-dependent Probe Amplification (MLPA) technique. Through the combination of NGS and MLPA, we identified three pathogenic variants in the gene and six in the gene. Besides these alterations, we found six additional pathogenic/likely-pathogenic variants in , , , , and genes. From our study, and emerge as the main genes associated with MBC risk, but also other genes seem to be associated with the disease. Indeed, some of these genes have already been implicated in female breast cancer predisposition, but others are known to be involved in other types of cancer. Consequently, our results suggest that novel genes could be involved in MBC susceptibility, shedding new light on their role in cancer development.