Slide 9

Familial Rates and Risk: Those We Still Don't Understand

Some families will exhibit higher than average rates of a particular cancer, yet when scientists search their genomes, they are unable to find the usual genomic alterations suspected of increasing cancer risk. These cases seem to point to gaps in our understanding of the full set of mutations required for cancer's development. They also prompt researchers to probe deeper in search of possible environmental exposures suffered by the clan collectively.