Abstract

Approximately half of all hereditary breast cancers are compromised in their DNA repair mechanisms due to loss of BRCA1 or BRCA2 function. Previous research has found a strong correlation between BRCA mutation and TP53 mutation. However, TP53 mutation status is often indirectly assessed by immunohistochemical staining of accumulated p53 protein. We sequenced TP53 exons 2 to 9 in 21 BRCA1-related breast cancers and 37 sporadic breast tumors. Strikingly, all BRCA1-related breast tumors contained TP53 mutations, whereas only half of these tumors stained positive for p53 accumulation. Positive p53 staining correlates with the presence of TP53 hotspot mutations in both BRCA1-related and sporadic breast tumors. However, whereas the majority of sporadic breast tumors that stained negative for p53 accumulation had wild-type TP53, the majority of BRCA1-associated breast tumors that stained negative for p53 accumulation had protein-truncating TP53 mutations (nonsense, frameshift, and splice mutations). Therefore, the strong selection for p53 loss in BRCA1-related tumors is achieved by an increase of protein-truncating TP53 mutations rather than hotspot mutations. Hence, immunohistochemical detection of TP53 mutation could lead to misdiagnosis in approximately half of all BRCA1-related tumors. The presence of deleterious TP53 mutations in most, if not all, BRCA1-related breast cancers suggests that p53 loss of function is essential for BRCA1-associated tumorigenesis. BRCA1-related tumors may therefore be treated not only with drugs that target BRCA1 deficiency [e.g., poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors] but also with drugs that selectively target p53-deficient cells. This raises interesting possibilities for combination therapies against BRCA1-deficient breast cancers and BRCA1-like tumors with homologous recombination deficiency.