Endocrine Abstracts

My group identified RET 30 years ago as the gene for Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia type 2. My involvement was pure chance: as a medical oncologist ’borrowed’ from Urology for a day to help in the Thyroid Clinic, the first case notes I opened were of an MEN2 family. With the help of many colleagues, we established Consortia across disciplines (and countries) to assemble families for genetic linkage mapping, and in parallel helped to build the human gene map for chromosome 10, where early results showed MEN2 must lie. The final steps to the gene were proving difficult, until I realised from a hotel staircase conversation that we were following the wrong genetic model. A phone call home, and three days later we had the gene.