2017
The TNQ Distinguished Lectures in the Life Sciences Series I. 7th Edition.
Mary-Claire King
Understanding Inherited Breast and Ovarian Cancer: From Gene Discovery to Precision Medicine and Public Health
Featured
Speaker
University of Washington geneticist Dr Mary-Claire King who pioneered the idea that breast cancer could be a heritable disease, gave free lectures in the Seventh Annual Cell Press-TNQ India Distinguished Lectureship Series
About the Speaker
Dr Mary-Claire King gave free lectures in Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi and Kolkata in February 2017. She was the Featured Speaker of the Seventh Annual Cell Press-TNQ India Distinguished Lectureship Series, aimed at bringing internationally renowned scientists to the Indian scientific community.
Professor King may be best known for demonstrating that breast and ovarian cancer can be inherited genetically rather than occurring only by chance or from environmental influences. She and her colleagues pinpointed a gene, BRCA1, which carries mutations that dramatically increase a woman’s risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer during her lifetime.
Professor King’s work also crosses into matters of human rights. By pioneering methods of extracting and sequencing maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, she made it possible for more than 100 children who ‘disappeared’ during the Argentinian military dictatorship to be reunited with their families. The approaches she developed are now in routine use in forensic science.
Another seminal contribution from Dr King’s research was the insight that despite dramatic differences in appearance, humans and chimpanzees share 99% of their genetic code, paving the way for greater understanding of how genomes change during evolution and the relationships of humans to other primates.
In addition to her work on inherited breast and ovarian cancer, Dr King is currently studying the genetic bases of schizophrenia and of severe pediatric disorders. She is the American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine and Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. She graduated cum laude with a degree in mathematics from Carleton College, completed her PhD in genetics at the University of California, Berkeley and was a postdoc at the University of California, San Francisco.
She was professor of genetics at the University of California, Berkeley from 1975 until 1995. She has led her lab at the University of Washington since 1995, and in 2012, was elected as the President of the American Society of Human Genetics.
Awards & Honours
1994
American Association for Cancer Research, Clowes Award for Basic Research
2004
Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, Genetics Prize
2003
Elected to the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.
2006
Weizmann Institute, Award for Women & Science
2006
American Cancer Society, Medal of Honor for Clinical Research
2006
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Medicine
2009
Elected to the French Academy of Sciences (foreign member)
2010
CSHL Double Helix Medal Honoree
2011
The Rockefeller University, Pearl Meister Greengard Prize
2012
Elected to the American Philosophical Society2013
Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize
2014
Lasker-Koshland Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science
2016
United States National Medal of Science
Other Resources
A call for cheaper genetic screening, The Hindu
This is an opportunity for Indian scientists to adopt new technologies, The Hindu
Fight breast cancer with genetic test, The Hindu
Breast cancer is a cancer of prosperity Mary Claire King, The Hindu
India can bring down cost for breast cancer detection says us scientist, Financial Express
Lecture
Schedule
Chennai:
February 20, 2017. 6.00 p.m.
Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao (Lady Andal) Concert Hall, Chetpet
Bengaluru
February 22, 2017. 4.30 p.m.
JN Tata Auditorium (IISc.)
New Delhi
February 24, 2017. 4.30 p.m.
Jawaharlal Auditorium, All India Institute of Medical Sciences(AIIMS)
Kolkata:
February 28, 2017. 11.00 a.m
Kala Mandir Hall, Shakespeare Sarani
Other Lectures
Karl Deisseroth
Illuminating the Brain
Eric Lander
The Human Genome and Beyond: A 35-year Journey of Genomic Medicine
Huda Zoghbi
A Journey from the Clinic to the Laboratory to Understand Brain Disorders