Dr. Scully’s research project involved the development of quantitative assays of BRCA1 and BRCA2 function in both homologous recombination and installed replication fork repair. These are two mechanisms by which BRCA proteins protect cells from developing cancer.
CPI funding to Dr. Scully’s research contributed to a major new discovery published in the journal Nature (Willis et al., 551, 2017: 590-595). Dr. Scully and his team uncovered the mechanism by which BRCA1 suppresses localized DNA rearrangements called “tandem duplications”. Importantly, these rearrangements are strongly associated with BRCA1-linked cancer but not with BRCA2-linked cancer. They believe a deeper understanding of the biology of tandem duplications will help us to understand the origins of cancer and will also guide us to the discovery of new therapies to prevent or if necessary, treat BRCA1-linked cancer.