High burden of copy number alterations and c-MYC amplification in prostate cancer from BRCA2 germline mutation carriers

Germline BRCA2 mutations are associated with poorer outcome prostate cancer (PCa) compared with sporadic tumours but this association remains to be characterised. In this study, we aim to assess if there is a signature set of copy number alterations (CNA) that could aid to the identification of BRCA2-mutated tumours and would assist us to understand their aggressive clinical behaviour. High-resolution array comparative genomic hybridisation profiling of DNA from PCa and matched morphologically normal prostate samples from 9 BRCA2 germline mutation carriers and 16 non-carriers in combination with unsupervised analysis was used to define copy number features. PCa from BRCA2 germline mutation carriers (B2T) harbour significantly more CNA than non-carrier tumours (NCTs) (P = 14 × 10-6). A hundred and sixteen regions had a significantly different distribution with both false discovery rate (FDR) and P value