Revisiting the Map: BRCA and the Future of Preventive Medicine

Lauren Berkowitz · Mar 10, 2026

As I've mentioned here before, I carry a BRCA1 mutation. Recently I wanted to dive deeper into the BRCA ecosystem because I had a theory about how BRCA might intersect with the rapidly growing field of longevity science.

I wanted to see the same type of full ecosystem infographic maps I've been seeing since the early 2010s in technology (AI, ML, data). I've always liked fitting complex landscapes onto a single page. It forces clarity, condenses thinking, and helps reveal relationships that might not be obvious in a paper or presentation.

I wanted to see BRCA the same way. I couldn't find a map like that. So I built one.

The map organizes the BRCA ecosystem across tiers: Capital, Knowledge, Translation, and Frontier. Each tier answers a different question. Who decided this was worth funding? What do we understand, and how do we find it in people? How does understanding become clinical action? And what does BRCA tell us about something much larger?

One structural observation worth noting: Altos Labs has $3 billion and no connection to the most clinically characterized high-risk germline population in medicine. BRCA1 carriers have known penetrance rates, established surveillance protocols, organized advocacy networks, and longitudinal follow-up data -- exactly what cellular reprogramming research needs. The organizational relationship between frontier science and the carrier population does not exist. Altos Labs and Myriad Genetics do not appear in the same analytical document.

That gap is not a failure of intent. It is a structural gap in how the ecosystem has been built. And structural gaps, once visible, are addressable. That is what the map is for.