Breast Cancer Research Group (BCRG)

          Breast cancer represents the most common malignancy and is the principal cause of cancer-related death in women world-wide. The rate of breast cancer incidence amongst females in the Arabic countries ranges between 13-35% of all cancer cases with about half the patients below 50 years old with a median age of 49-52 compared to 63 in the Western countries.
 
        The National Cancer Registry (NCR, published 2007) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia reports the breast cancer constituting 22.4% of cancer cases in females of all ages. The rate of incidence of breast cancer in Saudi Arabia is showing an increasing trend. From 18.8% of all female cancers in 2000, breast cancer incidence has jumped up to 22.4% as reported in the last published NCR report. The prevalence of breast cancer in Saudi females becomes more striking if cases were divided according to age group. The incidence rate of breast cancer in the female age group between 30-44 years old is 42%-49.4% of all cases (NCR 1999-2004).
 
        The extent of the contribution of hereditary cancer to the overall rates of breast cancer in Saudi patients is unknown. However, the high degree of consanguinity and inbreeding in the Saudi population is predicted to cause the spread and maintenance of founder mutations that contribute to breast cancer susceptibility. Such mutations are yet to be found because of an astonishing paucity in such basic research in the Kingdom.
 
        The overall agenda of the BCRG is to study changes at the transcription level using gene expression arrays for the discovery of novel biomarkers in Saudi breast cancer females, and how these studies can be exploited for better diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of breast cancer. Other research areas covered at BCRG include studying breast cancer epigenome and identifying potentially novel tumor suppressor genes in addition to nuclear morphometry studies for the analysis of tumor nuclear size. The mutational status of BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes will also be examined and Whole-Exome Resequencing will be applied to cases where BRCA1/2 mutations are excluded in order to identify novel mutational events and cancer susceptibility genes in Saudi population.