With the backing of a $1 million matching grant from the David S. and Karen A. Shapira Foundation, the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute has established the Frieda G. and Saul F. Shapira BRCA Cancer Research Program.

BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 are genes that, when mutated, increase the risk of breast cancer, as well as prostate, ovarian and pancreatic cancers.

"These are the genes that are most common in the American population that contribute to an increased risk to cancer, and they're of particularly high prevalence in the Jewish population that comes from Eastern Europe, the Ashkenazi Jews," Dr. Ronald Herberman, director of University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and UPMC Cancer Centers, said last week.

The program was announced before yesterday's Susan G. Komen Pittsburgh Race for the Cure, which in 15 previous runnings here has raised more than $19 million for the fight against breast cancer.

But the UPMC cancer programs have been researching BRCA genes "for a number of years."

"We already have over 200 families in our registry of BRCA families," Dr. Herberman said. "The more we learn about these mutations, the better chance we have to target high-risk patients and to find innovative ways to reduce their cancer risk."

Women with either mutation have a 50 percent to 80 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, according to UPMC. The disease also progresses more rapidly in those women than in breast cancer patients without the mutated genes.

Experts have estimated that as many as one of every 345 people in the nation carries a BRCA mutation. That number is about one in 40 for individuals of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.

Both men and women can carry the genetic mutations, which means they can be passed by either parent to children.

Some women carrying the mutation undergo prophylactic mastectomies or removal of their ovaries.

"You can take the prostate out," Dr. Herberman said, "but you can't take the pancreas out."

The David S. and Karen A. Shapira Foundation structured its $1 million gift as a matching grant to raise an additional $1.5 million from individuals and foundations. UPMC is matching these gifts on a dollar-for-dollar basis, for an overall goal of $5 million.

Dr. Herberman said the National Cancer Institute's budget for research costs only $21 per American per year, while "the burden of cancer costs each American approximately $936 per year."

UPMC said in its program announcement that community leaders and local foundations already have contributed $850,000 toward the fund-raising goal.