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PALB2 (Partner and localizer of BRCA2) is a gene whose normal job is to hold cell growth in check. The public catalogues list it as a drug target, a tumour suppressor, a biomarker and a DNA repair gene, and clinical evidence ties its variants to diagnosis, prognosis or drug response. Tied to Breast cancer, Ovarian cancer, Colorectal cancer and 5 more. This dossier gathers the 0 products (0 approved), 1 trial, 0 pathways and 0 resistance routes in the corpus that involve it, with external identifiers so it can be joined to UniProt, ChEMBL, Open Targets and the rest of biology.
Plays a critical role in homologous recombination repair (HRR) through its ability to recruit BRCA2 and RAD51 to DNA breaks. Strongly stimulates the DNA strand-invasion activity of RAD51, stabilises the nucleoprotein filament against a disruptive BRC3-BRC4 polypeptide and helps RAD51 to overcome the suppressive effect of replication protein A (RPA). Functionally cooperates with RAD51AP1 in promoting of D-loop formation by RAD51. Serves as the molecular scaffold in the formation of the BRCA1-PALB2-BRCA2 complex which is essential for homologous recombination. Via its WD repeats is proposed to scaffold a HR complex containing RAD51C and BRCA2 which is thought to play a role in HR-mediated DNA repair. Essential partner of BRCA2 that promotes the localisation and stability of BRCA2. Location: Nucleus (UniProt). Locus 16p12.2 (HGNC).
| Cancer | Prevalence | Measure | Note | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gallbladder cancer | 1.6% | Mutation | Mutation in 4 of 244 samples, 1.6%, in cBioPortal gbc_mskcc_2022. | cBioPortal (TCGA) |
| Triple-negative breast cancer | 1-2% | Germline or biallelic loss | 1.2% of 1,824 unselected patients (Couch 2015); 5 pathogenic germline variants among 237 whole genomes, 2.1%, two of them biallelic (Staaf 2019); 1.0% of 1,136 Nigerian breast cancer patients, eleven cases against no controls (Zheng 2018); cBioPortal: 2 of 176, 1.1%, in breast_msk_2018 and 1 of 123 in brca_tcga_pan_can_atlas_2018. | doi.org |
| Prostate cancer | 0.2-2% | PALB2, CHEK2, RAD51B/C/D, BARD1, BRIP1, FANCA, NBN inactivation | cBioPortal mutation in prostate_msk_2024 (2,260 samples): PALB2 19 (0.8%), CHEK2 14 (0.6%), BRIP1 17 (0.8%), BARD1 10 (0.4%), FANCA 15 (0.7%), RAD51B 6, RAD51C 3, RAD51D 2. Deep deletion adds a little: FANCA 42 of 2,260 (1.9%), CHEK2 5, PALB2 4, RAD51B 5. Germline in 692 men with metastatic disease: CHEK2 10 of 534 men with data, 1.9%; RAD51D 3, 0.4%; PALB2 3, 0.4% (Pritchard 2016). | cBioPortal (TCGA) |
| Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma | 0.2-0.6% | Germline or somatic pathogenic variant | 2 of 854 germline, 0.2% (Shindo 2017); listed among the double-strand repair genes in 21 of 289 resected patients (Yurgelun 2019) and the 122 germline carriers of 615 (Lowery 2018); 15 of 2,336 tumours, 0.6%, in pdac_msk_2024 and 4 of 395 in pancreas_msk_2024 (cBioPortal). Six germline PALB2 carriers among 42 evaluable patients responded to maintenance rucaparib at 50%, 3 of 6 (Reiss 2021). Genomic instability co-segregated with BRCA1, BRCA2 or PALB2 inactivation in 100 whole genomes (Waddell 2015). | doi.org |
Approximate, population-level figures; the measure column says what was counted. Ranges show the midpoint as a bar.
No product in the corpus is aimed at this target yet.
| Trial | Setting | Result | Products | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
EUROPAC ISRCTN62546421 | observational | Recruiting | Registry and surveillance programme for people at inherited risk of pancreatic cancer (familial pancreatic cancer, hereditary pancreatitis, BRCA2, PALB2, CDKN2A and other predisposition variants) at ten UK sites; recruiting from July 2019 to July 2039 with a target of 10,000 | Risk-stratified surveillance (2020 onwards) found actionable pancreatic lesions in 3.6 percent of participants against 0.8 percent before stratification (p = 0.001), and operable lesions in 3 percent against 0.6 percent (European Journal of Cancer 2026). | - |
No recorded escape route names this target.
No pathway diagram carries this target as a node.
No companion diagnostic in the registry measures this target.
No model entry for this target yet; check the cancer entries on the models page.
No open questions recorded for this target yet. Suggest one.
Query for this target: (TITLE:"PALB2" OR ABSTRACT:"PALB2" OR TITLE:"partner and localizer of BRCA2" OR ABSTRACT:"partner and localizer of BRCA2" OR TITLE:"Partner and localizer of BRCA2" OR ABSTRACT:"Partner and localizer of BRCA2" OR TITLE:"FLJ21816" OR ABSTRACT:"FLJ21816" OR TITLE:"FANCN" OR ABSTRACT:"FANCN") AND (cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about PALB2, not a curated reading list.
The dossier as machine-readable JSON, at /api/v1/dossiers/palb2.json: identifiers from HGNC, Ensembl, UniProt and ChEMBL, products with status, trials, pathways, hotspots, open questions and assays. The full entity record is in the open API at /api/v1/entities/palb2.json. Licence CC BY-NC 4.0.