The gene for hereditary breast-ovarian cancer, BRCA1, maps distal to EDH17B2 in chromosome region 17q12-q21.

A gene for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, BRCA1, has been mapped to chromosome 17q12-q21. This gene is responsible for cancer susceptibility in the majority of families with multiple cases of ovarian cancer and early-onset breast cancer. We report linkage results of a family with 10 cases of breast cancer and a single case of ovarian cancer. A recombinant event in this family places BRCA1 distal (telomeric) to the locus EDH17B2, which codes for the enzyme estradiol 17 beta-dehydrogenase II. This recombinant is based on the appearance of breast cancer in a 45 year old woman. Under our genetic model, we estimate the probability that this woman carries a BRCA1 mutation to be 94%. These data further reduce the region of assignment of BRCA1 on chromosome 17q12-q21 and should expedite positional cloning of this important gene.