By Larry B. Dendy
ldendy@uga.edu
Mary-Claire King, the leader of the research team that produced the first genetic proof that breast  cancer can be an inherited disease, is a pre-eminent medical researcher and an authority on human genetic diversity and evolution.
In addition to her ground-breaking studies on cancer, King, a professor of medicine and genetics at the University of Washington, has brought her genetics expertise to bear on another distressing problem--human-rights violations.
King applies the techniques of DNA sequencing to help identify people who have been victims of social and political upheavals in other countries. She has carried out DNA identification for the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal and is a consultant to the Commission on the Disappearance of Persons in Argentina.
King will discuss her work in applying genetics technology to human-rights problems when she presents the spring Charter Lecture March 12. The lecture, at 4 p.m. in the Chapel, is open free to the public.
King is the first Walt Disney-American Cancer Society Professor for Breast Cancer Research at the University of Washington. The chair was created with a $1 million endowment from the widow of Walt Disney.
The 1990 announcement by King’s lab identifying a gene known as BRCA1 as the genetic link to hereditary breast cancer is considered a milestone in modern cancer research. Among other developments, the research led to cloning of BRCA1 and pinpointing of its location in the human genome.
“Before BRCA1, there was a widespread view that diseases like breast cancer were caused by multiple genes that interact with environmental factors,” explains Maynard Olson, a University of Washington scientist who is a leader in the Human Genome Project. “Mary-Claire’s work told a different story--that in carefully selected families she could find a fairly simple genetic link for breast cancer. We now know that many important diseases can be attacked in the same way.”
King and colleagues at Vanderbilt University subsequently reported that BRCA1 slows growth of cancer cells, and offered evidence that the gene may help stop, or even reverse, some forms of breast and ovarian cancer. King has extended her research to include genetic analysis of inherited deafness and a form of systemic lupus. Her lab also works on the genetics of HIV and rheumatoid arthritis.
King is chair of the genetics section of the Breast Cancer Program Review Group for the National Cancer Institute and serves as a scientific consultant for the institute’s Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
She is on the National Commission on Breast Cancer of the President’s Cancer Panel and is a liaison to the National Cancer Policy Board for the Institute of Medicine Council.
She has received the Clowes Award for basic research from the American Association for Cancer Research and the Brinker Award from the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
Often speaking under sponsorship of the Komen Foundation, King is known as a mentor and role model for female scientists. She is on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Office of Women’s Health in the National Institutes of Health.
The Charter Lecture was started in 1988 to honor the high ideals expressed in the 1785 charter that founded the University of Georgia as the first chartered state university in America. The series brings to campus speakers who discuss ideas of general importance to a free society. |
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