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Cancer genomic profiling predicts pathogenicity of BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants

Kondrashova, O.; Johnston, R. L.; Parsons, M. T.; Davidson, A. L.; Canson, D. M.; Tran, K. A.; Cline, M. S.; Waddell, N.; Sivakumar, S.; Sokol, E. S.; Jin, D. X.; Pavlick, D. C.; Decker, B.; Frampton, G. M.; Spurdle, A. B.; Parsons, M. T.; Spurdle, A. B.

2026-03-06 genetic and genomic medicine
10.64898/2026.03.05.26347746 medRxiv
Show abstract

Accurate classification of BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants is essential for cancer risk assessment and therapy selection, yet over one-third remain variants of uncertain significance (VUS). Here, using 120,660 real-world cancer genomic profiles with BRCA1 or BRCA2 variants from a >800,000-sample cohort, we develop machine learning models that predict pathogenicity using clinical and tumor-derived features, including a pan-cancer homologous recombination deficiency signature, co-mutated genes, zygosity, and cancer type. Trained on classified variants from ClinVar, our models achieved near-perfect performance, with validation ROC-AUC of 1.000 for BRCA1 and 0.989 for BRCA2 variants with [≥]5 observations, translating to strong benign or pathogenic evidence for VCEP classification. Applying these models to 1,073 BRCA1 and 1,639 BRCA2 VUS, we strengthened or enabled classification of 39.48% BRCA1 and 50.52% BRCA2 assessable variants. This approach transforms underutilized tumor profiling data into evidence that can be directly integrated into variant classification, providing a scalable framework for other tumor profiling datasets and cancer genes associated with defined tumor genomic features.

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