HudsonAlpha, Kailos Genetics, and a Plan for Population-Wide BRCA Screening
By Allison Proffitt
September 9, 2015 | It’s one of her most consistent talking points. Mary-Claire King, the 2014 Lasker Award-winning scientist who discovered the BRCA1 gene implicated in breast cancer, has issued several public challenges to make BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing available to all 30-year-old women.
Last October, King made her case at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama, where she spoke at the annual breast and ovarian cancer awareness event and fundraiser.
HudsonAlpha has accepted the challenge.
Starting on October 30, 2015, every 30-year-old woman in Huntsville and Madison County, Alabama, will be eligible for a free cancer screening panel thanks to the Information is Power initiative of the HudsonAlpha Institute. Kailos Genetics, a six-year-old diagnostics company that spun out of HudsonAlpha and is still headquartered in the same building, is partnering with HudsonAlpha on the initiative and will conduct the testing using its 23-gene Women’s Health Panel.