Geneticist Mary-Claire King discovered BRCA1, the first gene for a hereditary form of breast cancer.
Biotechnology, Diagnostics, Disease, Genomics, Non-Profit Research, Oncology, Therapeutics, Women’s Health
In 1990, Geneticist Mary-Claire King and her colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) discovered BRCA1, the first gene for a hereditary form of breast cancer.
That accomplishment helped explain why some women who carried mutations in this gene saw their lifetime risk for developing breast cancer rise from 8% to over 80%.
Although Dr. King and her colleagues at UC Berkeley, did not clone the gene, they laid the groundwork for genetically testing at-risk women for BRCA1 to reduce or prevent malignancies from developing.
Tags:
Source: National Cancer Institute
Credit: Photo: Courtesy Mary-Claire King, University of Washington.
