New versions of BRCA1, a tumor suppressor gene involved in breast cancer, make clinical management difficult. Different versions of BRCA1 need unique treatment. Some versions are pathogenic, whereas some are neutral. However, information on new BRCA1 versions are limited, and more versions are expected to be discovered in patients through the course of time.

To aid clinical practitioners in classifying risky and neutral BRCA1 versions, researcher Lea Starita of Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine in the USA and colleagues discover and classify nearly 4,000 BRCA1 variants using CRISPR-Cas9. They produce 96.5% of all possible versions of 13 most important sequences in the gene. They find ~400 non-functional and ~300 pathogenic versions. The team said that this study is just a start of further classifying versions of other sequences of BRCA1 and other breast cancer-related genes.

For more information, read the article in Nature.