On May 24, 2001, Dr. Eldon Jupe and a team of Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) researchers found that BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes may predict breast cancer risk in women.

The prohibitin irregularity, the T allele, seemed to lack the antiproliferative activity of the more common functional C allele, which led researchers to hypothesize that women who carried the prohibitin T allele may have an increased risk for breast cancer.

The study was funded by the Presbyterian Health Foundation, the American Cancer Society and the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology. The findings were published in the The Lancet.