Hereditary predisposition to breast cancer – a person’s own genes, passed down from parent to child – remains one of the biggest challenges – and opportunities – in the drive to prevent the disease.

Of course, women with mutations in the hereditary breast cancer genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, have much higher risks of breast and ovarian cancers that often develop early in life.

That’s why fully understanding the process that a normal cell must take to transform into a tumor cell in BRCA mutation carriers is – among the wide range of important and potentially life saving scientific research – central not only to new insights and approaches to cancer prevention but also, quite simply, how many families may think about their futures.

One of the leaders of that research: Dr. Judy Garber. Dr. Garber is Chairman of the BCRF Scientific Advisory Board. She is also Director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at the Susan Smith Center for Women's Cancers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, as well as Director of the Cancer Risk and Prevention Clinic at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. A professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, among her many honors, in 2013 Dr. Garber was elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine, now known as the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences