Eitan Friedman

Eitan Friedman's oncogenetics work at Sheba Medical Center's Meirav clinic is the systematic survey of what inherited cancer risk looks like across Israel's communities. With Laitman and colleagues he genotyped high-risk Ashkenazi, Balkan, North African, Yemenite and Asian (Iraqi and Iranian) Jews and found community-specific recurring variants: BRCA1 Tyr978X in 23 of 892 people of Iraqi and Iranian origin, BRCA1 c.981delAT in 7 of 264 of North African origin, BRCA1 A1708E in 8 of 282 of Balkan origin. The same group's study of 250 ethnically diverse high-risk Israeli families, screened after the common Jewish founders were excluded, found 19 different pathogenic BRCA1/2 variants and concluded that there are no predominant recurring variants across these populations, which is the argument for sequencing rather than a founder panel outside the Ashkenazi population. His recent work covers hormone therapy after oophorectomy, prostate screening in male carriers and breast surveillance in young carriers.