Geneticist Mary-Claire King awaits Nobel call after pioneering BRCA discovery

STAT spoke with geneticist Mary-Claire King, whose discovery of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 cancer mutations three decades ago has become a landmark in oncology.

King recalled being invited to give a seminar at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, a meeting she later understood was a discreet signal that the Nobel committee was reviewing her work.

Her research in 1994 to 1995 showed that breast and ovarian cancers can be hereditary and that mutations in BRCA genes dramatically raise risk. The insight has led to preventive surgeries for carriers and is credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives and reshaping cancer treatment.