Rare germline variants in ATM are associated with chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a highly heritable cancer, with a 7.5-fold increased risk in first-degree relatives.1 However, inherited predisposition to CLL remains largely unexplained by traditional linkage or genome-wide association studies. Here, we hypothesized that CLL heritability might arise from rare coding variants not analyzed in previous studies.