In the 16th and 17th centuries, Dr. Lusitani and Dr. Tulp from Holand, believed that cancers are contagious after they noticed the presence of breast cancers in the same household members.[1][2][3]
In 1990, Dr. Mary-Claire King, the professor of genome sciences from Chicago, was the first one to link the single gene on chromosome 17 to many breast and ovarian cancers, after many years of research to find evidence that there is a genetic pattern linked to the incidence of complex diseases.
1996, King and the Breast Cancerresearch foundation, conducted a study on women of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry in NYC and also on Palestinian women, which lead to the definitive confirmation that mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 is linked to the incidence of ovarian and breast cancer.
↑Apostolou, Paraskevi; Fostira, Florentia (2013). "Hereditary Breast Cancer: The Era of New Susceptibility Genes". BioMed Research International. 2013: 1–11. doi:10.1155/2013/747318. ISSN2314-6133.
↑Godet, Inês; M. Gilkes, Daniele (2017). "BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations and treatment strategies for breast cancer". Integrative Cancer Science and Therapeutics. 4 (1). doi:10.15761/ICST.1000228. ISSN2056-4546.