Genetic polymorphisms and cancer susceptibility of breast cancer in Korean women

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer among women in Western countries, and its prevalence is also increasing in Asia. The major risk factor for breast cancer can be traced to reproductive events that influence the lifetime levels of hormones. However, a large percentage of breast cancer cases cannot, be explained by these risk factors. The identification of susceptibility factors that predispose individuals to breast cancer (for instance, if they are exposed to particular environmental agents) could possibly give further insight into the etiology of this malignancy and provide targets for the future development of therapeutics. The most interesting candidate genes include those that mediate a range of functions. These include carcinogen metabolism, DNA repair, steroid hormone metabolism, signal transduction, and cell cycle control. we conducted a hospital-based case-control study on South Korea to evaluate the potential modifying role of the genetic pollymprphisms of selected low penetrance gens that are involved carcinogen metabolisms (i.e., CYP1A1, CYP2E1, GSTM1/T1/P1, NAT1/2, etc.), estrogen synthesis and metabolism (i.e., CYP19, CYP17, CYP1B1, COMT, ER-alpha, etc.), DNA repair (i.e., XRCC1/3, ERCC2/4, ATM, AGT, etc.), and signal transduction as well as others (i.e., TGF- beta, IGF-1, TNF- beta, IL-1B, IL-1RN, etc.). We also took into account the potential interaction between these and the known risk factors of breast cancer. The results of selected genes will be presented in this mini-review.