Prostate and Colon Cancer News: The 2-Hit Hypothesis Revisited
Posted July 17, 2016 by
A report and a case published in two major medical journals this week suggest that relatives of certain individuals with cancer may be at higher risk, due to inherited (germline) mutations in DNA repair genes.
Only 5 to 10 percent of cancers are inherited. Such individuals inherit a cancer-predisposing mutation in all their cells, and then a somatic (body) cell undergoes a second mutation that initiates the disease. The second mutation may be spontaneous or in response to an environmental factor such as smoking.
The one-two punch of inherited cancers, called the 2-hit hypothesis, was first described in 1971.
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