Mark Skolnick

Dr. Mark H. Skolnick, Ph.D., is the Founder of Myriad Genetics Inc.

Early Life and Education

Mark Henry Skolnick: Mark H Skolnick was born in Temple, Texas, January 28, 1946. His grandparents were from Latvia, Russia and Germany. His mother graduated from Wellesley College and his father from Harvard. His parents met in Princeton where his father was a Ph.D. student. They subsequently returned to Boston, where he received an M.D. at Harvard. His father taught a clinical post graduate course in psychoanalysis at Stanford, where Skolnick was introduced to the bright Stanford academics at a very young age. “It got put into my head pretty early on that medicine was interesting,” says Skolnick, “but it might be more interesting to be an academic than a doctor. I’m not sure I would have wanted to just focus on seeing ill people.”^[1] Skolnick was very good at math but his parents also played a very significant role rising his interest in science. “I think I was driven a lot by actually wanting to do something of lasting social significance,” he said.^[1] At the age of fourteen he wanted to be a doctor where most of his academics were in mathematics.

He studied economics in the University of California, Berkeley, focusing mainly on anthropology. He was mostly interested in quantitative problems and issues like migration, unemployment, inflation etc. He continued his graduate studies in demography in the same university. During that time he realized that he likes to study individuals. As he says, “The way you study individuals is in pedigrees, by linking fertility, mortality, migration-parameters for single individuals.”^[1] He became interested in genealogy and carried on his first project where he did the reconstruction of genealogies from Parma Valley, Italy.

Scientific career

In 1980, Botstein and his colleagues Ray White, Mark Skolnick, and Ronald W. Davis proposed a method for constructing a genetic linkage map using restriction fragment length polymorphisms that was used in subsequent years to identify several human disease genes including BRCA1. Variations of this method were used in the mapping efforts that predated and enabled the sequencing phase of the Human Genome Project.

In 1984, Mark Skolnick, with two other colleagues formed a company called DMS systems. It was a profit-oriented company of genealogy database system that Skolnick and his colleagues had developed. This company was later bought by Open Vision.

In 1988, Mark Skolnick, formed an other company called the Wallace-Skolnick company.

In May 1991, Myriad Genetics, Inc. was a joint formation of Mark Skolnick and Peter Meldrum, which was initially supposed to be called Helix Technologies. This company was particularly dedicated to finding genes for diseases like cancer and heart disease. Myriad Genetics initially did not provide much profit compare to the other biotechnology companies of that time, however what made this company superior to its competitor companies because of the findings of the cancer families that Skolnick had studied for twenty years.

Scientific Discoveries

Dr. Skolnick directed the group that cloned the breast cancer susceptibility gene, BRCA1; found the full-length sequence of BRCA2. He cloned the MMAC1 (PTEN) tumor suppressor gene. He cloned a prostate cancer gene (HPC2). He also discovered the tumor suppressor function of p16.

Discovery of BRCAl and BRCA2 genes

Connecting Demography with Genetics: According to Skolnick, “ the first scientific step in my search of the BRCA gene arose from my interest in demography, the study of human populations. The standard wisdom in the 1960s was that this was small field that should be studied with in the contrast of sociology or economics. “^[2] He used the demography and applied to genetics and studied individual in multi-generational families.

Secondly, he formed familial cancer screenings clinic. Skolnick and his colleagues used this clinic to study a number of people in different families with different types of cancers. As Skolnick states, “ This resources was a key to our success”^[2] in finding the BRCA genes.

Finally, Skolnick and his group developed a method called Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisms (RFLPs) for genetic mapping which was also a significant resource for human genome project. After that point on his group focused on this technique and started to map and clone genes that caused diseases. The first gene they cloned successfully using this RFLPs was of Alport Syndrome. This technique was one of many later used for the discovery of BRCA.

Awards and Recognitions

• Dr Skolnick was elected a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association in 1990.
• The Utah Technology Council (UTC) has announced Greg Butterfield, Peter D. Meldrum and Mark H. Skolnick will be inducted into the 2009 UTC Hall of Fame. UTC will honor these renowned business leaders at the 11th annual Hall of Fame black-tie gala on Friday, October 23, 2009, at the Grand Ballroom of the Grand America Hotel, Salt Lake City.
• The Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology 1995 the American Cancer Society Distinguished Service Award 1995, the Katharine Berkan Judd Award in 1996, the Legacy of Life Award from the Deseret Foundation’s Heart and Lung Research Foundation in 2001,
• In 1994, the New York Times acknowledged him as "leader of the team that successfully identified the gene for breast cancer." Said the NY Times: "No one is more surprised and gratified than Dr. Mark H. Skolnick of the University of Utah, whose team plucked the gene from a crowded stretch of chromosome 17 and out of the grasp of 12 other teams that had thrown hats and hopes into the ring.”^[3]
• He serves as Director of Prolexys Pharmaceuticals Inc.(1991-N/A)
• He served as a Director of Continuous Computing Corp.
• He served as a Director of Myriad Genetics Inc. (1991–2010)

References