The American geneticist Mary-Claire King, who has contributed to save millions of lives with the early treatment of some tumors by having discovered more than three decades the genes that cause some types of breast and ovarian cancer, has been distinguished this Thursday in Spain with the Princess Prize of Asturias of Scientific and Technical Research 2025.
This contribution “pioneer in the application of genetics to the study and prevention of cancer” has been highlighted by the jury that this award granted in Oviedo (north), whose ruling also includes its contributions when it comes to knowing the similarity between species and the defense of human rights.
This 76 -year -old researcher, currently a professor at the University of Washington, demonstrated almost half a century ago the great kin that unites humans and chimpanzees, since they share 99 percent of the genes, and developed in the eighties a method known as “grandparent index ‘that through the application of dental genetics allowed to link with the’ grandmothers of the place of May ‘ during the military dictatorship.
This method was also used to identify the bodies of hundreds of missing in Argentina and other Latin American countries, an issue that has been highlighted by some of the members who since Oviedo have failed this award today and that have highlighted the social aspect of this researcher that in 1974 began to work at the origin of breast cancer.
According to the Molecular Biologist Ginés Morata Pérez, a member of the jury, is an “extraordinary scientific” that has made discoveries that have had “not only a huge scientific impact, but also a tremendous social impact” for their contribution to the fight against the specific cancers of women.
After many years of a complex research and development of new statistical models of population genetics and evolutionary genetics, in 1990 he managed to identify a gene located on chromosome 17, called BRCA1, as well as that the mutations in this gene were involved in the development of certain types of hereditary breast and ovary cancer.
Paradigm change
This work was a paradigm change in the knowledge of the origin of cancer, a complex disease that was not suspected that could have a genetic origin, and in its treatment.
From then on, the study of this disease and other diseases called rare, such as Huntington’s disease or cystic fibrosis, began to focus from another point of view.
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He has recently played a fundamental role in the discovery of the molecular foundations of schizophrenia and has provided new knowledge about his pathogenesis and possible therapies.
King’s candidacy was proposed by the American biologist Peter Greenberg, who was distinguished with this same award in 2023, and was supported by Gene E. Robinson, director of the Carl R. WOEse Institute of Genomic Biology of the University of Illinois (EU).
Other winners
Last year, Canadiente Daniel J. Drucker, Danish chemist Jens Juul Holst, the molecular biologist Jeffrey M. Friedan and the endocrinologist Joel F. Havener, both Americans, and the chemistry Svetlana Mojsov (Macedonia-Eu) were distinguished with this award. Already fighting obesity.
The scientific and technical research has been the seventh of the eight awards to fail in the XLV edition of the Princess of Asturias Awards, so that only international cooperation remains to be failed, next Wednesday, June 18.
So far the Social Sciences have been granted, to the American demographer Douglas Massey; that of the arts, to Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide; that of the letters, to the writer Eduardo Mendoza; that of communication and humanities, to the German philosopher and essayist of South Korean origin byung-Chul Han; that of sports, to American tennis player Serena Williams, and that of Concordia, to the National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico.
The awards, endowed with 50,000 euros and the reproduction of a sculpture by Joan Miró, will be delivered next October at the Campoamor Theater in Oviedo in a ceremony that will be chaired by the kings of Spain, to which Princess Leonor and Infanta Sofia will accompany.
With EFE information.
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