Abstract
Background: CHEK2 variants are associated with intermediate
breast cancer risk among other cancers. We aimed to comprehensively
describe CHEK2 variants in a Spanish hereditary cancer (HC)
cohort and adjust American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and
the Association for Molecular Pathology (ACMG-AMP) guidelines for their
classification. Methods: First, three CHEK2 frequent variants
were screened in a retrospective Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer
cohort of 516 patients. After, the whole CHEK2 coding region was
analyzed by next-generation sequencing in 1,848 prospective patients
with HC suspicion. We refined ACMGAMP criteria and applied different
combinatorial rules to classify CHEK2 variants and define risk
alleles. Results: We identified 10 CHEK2 null variants, 6
missense variants with discordant interpretation in ClinVar database,
and 35 additional variants of unknown significance. Twelve variants were
classified as (likely)-pathogenic; 2 can also be considered
“established risk-alleles” and one as “likely risk-allele”. The
prevalence of (likely)-pathogenic variants in the HC cohort was 0.8%
(1.3% in breast cancer patients and 1.0% in hereditary non-polyposis
colorectal cancer patients). Conclusions: Here we provide ACMG
adjustment guidelines to classify CHEK2 variants. We hope that
this work would be useful for variant classification of other genes with
low effect variants