Mary-Claire King on waiting for the Nobel: a conversation with the BRCA1 pioneer
STAT News spoke with geneticist Mary-Claire King ahead of this year's Nobel announcements about her discovery of the BRCA1 locus and what waiting for the prize is like.
Ahead of the 2026 Nobel Prize announcements, STAT News published a conversation with Mary-Claire King, the geneticist at the University of Washington whose 1990 work mapped the chromosomal location of what became known as BRCA1 — a hereditary breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility locus that has since reshaped genetic counselling, family-history assessment, and hereditary cancer research worldwide.
King, who has been among the names most frequently cited in Nobel Prize speculation over recent years, spoke to STAT about what it is like to wait for the committee's call, the long arc from her early linkage analysis to the molecular cloning of BRCA1 by other groups, and the continuing clinical and research relevance of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer genetics.
The piece is primarily a profile and does not report new research findings. It serves as useful contextual reading ahead of the Nobel announcements and as a concise summary of King's scientific contributions for educators and students covering the history of cancer genetics. The STAT article is behind a partial paywall; the lede and contextual framing are publicly accessible.
Plain-language version
For patients, families, and general readers. Educational only — not medical advice.
Mary-Claire King is a geneticist who, in 1990, discovered that a specific region on chromosome 17 was linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer in some families. That region later led to the identification of the BRCA1 gene. Faults (called variants) in BRCA1 and in a related gene, BRCA2, are known to increase the chance of developing certain cancers in some families — this is different from the more common, non-hereditary forms of these cancers.
Ahead of this year's Nobel Prize announcements, a science news outlet spoke with Professor King about her career and what it is like to be mentioned as a possible Nobel laureate year after year. The piece does not describe any new research — it is a profile of a scientist and her work.
This is an educational summary, not medical advice. If anything here raises questions for you, please speak with your GP or a clinical professional.
Sources
Read the original reporting — these are the public sources this summary draws from.
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Primary source Stat News · 2026-10-02What it's like to wait for the call from the Nobel Prize committee