The Race to Locate BRCA1 (Breast Cancer 1)
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medical studies
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published 03/06/2008
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SummaryIn an interview, Dr. Mary-Claire King said, “To me, the most interesting questions are those that have potentially a very practical outcome.”1 One of these questions was, What causes breast cancer? This question perplexed Dr. King since she was thirteen years old and lost her best friend to breast cancer. Over three decades later, in 1990, she discovered the breast cancer gene, brca1, and mapped its approximate location on the human genome.2 In the words of Dr. Mark Skolnick, who would later become a key rival in pinpointing the location of this exact gene: “It galvanized research.”2 Dr. King’s breakthrough took the scientific community by storm and inspired a subsequent flurry of scientists to try and locate brca1 as well as other disease-causing genes. Though it was Dr. Skolnick and the team at biopharmaceutical company Myriad Genetics Inc. that won the race of locating brca1, and Myriad Genetics that developed a diagnostic test (still in place today) called bracanalysis,3 which screens women for their susceptibility for developing breast cancer, Dr. King’s work greatly paved the way for such an application. bracanalysis is especially significant because it marks an era of revolutionary preventative medicine, using new technologies to diagnose a person’s chances of developing a disease in order to prevent its onset.
Table of Contents
- When Dr. Victor Velculescu came to lecture, he said that there are 20,000 genes in our 3-billion base pairs in our genetic code.
- In the 1980s, DNA markers, which are 'unique, easily detectable pieces of DNA' and PCR emerged as prominent tools in genetic research.
- Long before brca1's discovery, Dr. King hoped for 'genetic screening, early diagnosis, and therapeutic advances' with locating disease-causing genes.
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