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In honor of her “contributions to medical science and human rights,” Mary-Claire King, PhD, professor of genome sciences and medical genetics at the University of Washington, has been awarded the Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science.
King, responsible for the discovery of the BRCA1 gene, was awarded “for bold, imaginative, and diverse contributions to medical science and human rights — she discovered the BRCA1 gene locus that causes hereditary breast cancer and deployed DNA strategies that reunite missing persons or their remains with their families,” according to the Lasker Foundation website.
In an opinion piece published in JAMA, King and colleagues Ephrat Levy-Lahad, MD, and Amnon Lahad, MD, MPH, both of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, call for genetic testing of all women beginning at age 30 years as part of routine care.
“Many women with mutations in these genes are identified as carriers only after their first cancer diagnosis because their family history of cancer was not sufficient to suggest genetic testing,” King wrote. “To identify a woman as a carrier only after she develops cancer is a failure of cancer prevention.”
The researchers said population-based screening for BRCA mutations will “both save women’s lives and provide a model for other public health programs in genomic medicine,” outcomes worth the cost of substantial public education and the development of new counseling efforts.
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