No association of polymorphisms in the cell polarity gene with breast cancer risk

The human homolog of the Drosophila Scribble (SCRIB) tumor suppressor gene encodes a protein that regulates apical-basolateral polarity in mammalian epithelia and controls cell proliferation. Due to the role of cell polarity proteins in human cancers, we investigated whether genetic variability in SCRIB impacts breast carcinogenesis and tumor pathology. Five genetic variants were analyzed for an association with breast cancer risk and histopathological tumor parameters using a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) tagging approach. Genotyping of five tag SNPs was performed by TaqMan allelic discrimination and RFLP-based PCR using the GENICA population-based breast cancer case-control collection including 1,021 cases and 1,015 age-matched controls. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated by ordinal logistic regression. None of the tag SNPs was associated with breast cancer risk or tumor characteristics. Our findings suggest that genetic variability in the SCRIB polarity gene does not contribute to breast cancer development.