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Thirty years since the race to the BRCA1 gene

The isolation of the BRCA1 gene 30 years ago ushered in the era of genetic testing for breast and other cancers, launched a long-lasting patent battle and eventually led to a tailored cancer therapy.
By
  1. Alan Ashworth

    1. Alan Ashworth is at the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, San Francisco, California 94107, USA.

It had long been suspected that the occurrence of breast cancer had a familial component, but early studies were confounded by the complexity of the disease. However, in 1990, researchers identified a key genetic determinant of inherited breast cancer risk1, which fired the starting gun for what turned out to be a four-year race to identify the underlying gene. This was achieved when Miki et al., in a 1994 paper in Science2, described a previously unknown gene in which affected individuals in high-risk families carried deleterious mutations. The work provided strong evidence that this was indeed the BRCA1 gene.

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Nature 634, 1062-1063 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03358-6

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Competing Interests

A.A. is a co-founder of Tango Therapeutics, Azkarra Therapeutics, Ovibio, Kytarro and TillerTx; a member of the board of Cytomx, Ovibio Corporation, Cambridge Science Corporation; a member of the scientific advisory board of Genentech, GLAdiator, Circle, Bluestar/Clearnote Health, Earli, Ambagon, Phoenix Molecular Designs, Yingli/280Bio, Trial Library, ORIC and HAP10; a consultant for ProLynx, Next RNA and Novartis; receives research support from SPARC; and holds patents on the use of PARP inhibitors held jointly with AstraZeneca from which he has benefited financially (and may do so in the future).

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