Question: Can breast cancer from a mother be past down to a son even though the son gets a different type of cancer called non-hodgkins lymphoma? So is in this the cancer inherited?

Alexis Barr answered on 18 Jun 2013:

This is a difficult question. It depends on the mutation that the mother had that caused her breast cancer. If the mutation is in a gene that when mutated could lead to more mutations occurring in other genes (for example BRCA1, BRCA2) then there could be a link. But it really depends. It could just be a very unlucky coincidence. You can only really know if you know the gene involved – which you could find by sequencing all the mother’s and son’s genes, as well as other family members to compare to.