Mary-Claire King, Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research

Armando G. Tejeda

Correspondent

La Jornada Newspaper, Friday, June 13, 2025, p. 6

Madrid. American geneticist Mary-Claire King was recognized with the Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research for her pioneering and crucial research work in the early detection of cancer, particularly breast and ovarian cancer, and for her methods for identifying missing persons using a rigorous system that aids in the identification of remains, used by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, among others. She has also made important discoveries in schizophrenia research. This award is one of the most prestigious in Europe and has previously been awarded to prominent scientists such as Katalin Karikó, Drew Weissman, Philip Felgner, Uğur Şahin, Özlem Türeci, Derrick Rossi, Peter Higgs, and François Englert.

The jury for the awards unanimously agreed to award the recognition to the scientist born in Chicago in 1946, highlighting that Dr. Mary-Claire King has made pioneering contributions to the application of genetics to the study and prevention of cancer, the similarity between species, and the defense of human rights . They also noted that King's studies have made it possible to establish for the first time the close relationship between a specific gene and the risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer, thus contributing to saving millions of lives. Through her research, she discovered the surprising genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees and developed a rigorous methodology, both scientifically and legally, with which she has achieved the family reunification of missing persons .

On this occasion, the jury was composed of renowned scientists, most of them Spanish, such as Pedro Miguel Echenique Landiríbar, Alberto Aparici Benages, Juan Luis Arsuaga Ferreras, Avelino Corma Canós, Elena García Armada, and María Teresa Telleria Jorge, among others. The nomination was presented by Peter Greenberg, who received this same recognition in 2023, and was also supported by Gene E. Robinson, director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois.

Transcendental works

Dr. King graduated from Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota) with a degree in Mathematics in 1966 and subsequently completed her doctoral dissertation in Genetics at the University of Berkeley. From 1974 to 1976, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of San Francisco, after which she returned to Berkeley as a Professor of Genetics and Epidemiology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. She worked there until 1995, when she joined the American Cancer Society at the University of Washington (Seattle) and is an affiliate member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.

Her doctoral work in Evolutionary Biology was already of enormous significance, determining the close genetic proximity between humans and chimpanzees—99 percent identical—through statistical analysis of protein similarity. In 1974, King began researching the origin of breast cancer with Dr. Petrakis's group. After many years of complex research and development of new statistical models of population genetics and evolutionary genetics, in 1990 she was able to identify a gene located on chromosome 17, called BRCA1, and that mutations in it were implicated in the development of certain breast and ovarian diseases. This work marked a paradigm shift in our understanding of the origin of cancer. From then on, the study of this disease and other so-called rare conditions, such as Huntington's disease and cystic fibrosis, began to be approached from a different perspective.

Dr. King has also played a significant role in the application of genetics in the field of human rights, such as in cases of identifying missing persons and their descendants after the Argentine dictatorship and in other countries, with the so-called grandparent index . King—whose work has led to the identification and reunification of 138 families to date—worked with the grandmothers of the disappeared to establish the National Genetic Data Bank in Argentina, the first institution dedicated to systematically preserving genetic information for future identification.

He has recently made key contributions to the understanding of schizophrenia, providing evidence that the disorder arises from de novo mutations—changes in the DNA sequence of a gene observed for the first time in a person and not seen in previous generations—that damage genes regulating neurogenesis in the fetal prefrontal cortex.

The geneticist's extensive scientific output includes 349 scientific publications and 48,361 citations. She has also received numerous awards, including honorary doctorates from more than 20 universities around the world and membership in the National Academies of Medicine and Sciences of the United States, among others. This was the seventh of eight Princess of Asturias Awards bestowed this year. Previously, the Princess of Asturias Awards for Communication and Humanities were awarded to the German philosopher and essayist of South Korean origin Byung-Chul Han; the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature to the Spanish writer Eduardo Mendoza; the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences to the American sociologist and demographer Douglas Massey; the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts to the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide; the Princess of Asturias Award for Sports to the tennis player Serena Williams; and the Princess of Concord Award to the National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico. The Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation will be announced next week. All the awards will be presented at a single ceremony in the city of Oviedo, at the Campoamor Theater, next October.