Human geneticist Mary-Claire King will visit Morehouse School of Medicine on Thursday to discuss genetic screening for women and the impact on breast cancer risk.
King, a professor of genome sciences and of medicine at the University of Washington, will discuss, “Inherited Breast Cancer: From Gene Discovery to Public Health.”
King has recommended offering genetic testing for all women at about age 30 to reduce the risk of breast cancer.
King’s discovery in 1990 of the BRCA1 “breast cancer gene” demonstrated a mechanism of inherited cancer and proved that gene mutations could predict vulnerability to the disease. She recently showed that women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations had elevated risk for breast cancer, even if they have no family history of the disease.
The lecture, co-sponsored by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation begins at 2 p.m. and is free and open to the public. King is a recipient of the Lasker Foundation’s Special Achievement Award in Medical Science.
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