CSB Faculty

Robin J. Leach, Ph.D.
Professor

University of Utah, 1984

(210) 567-6947
LEACH@UTHSCSA.EDU

Dr. Leach is course director for the Graduate Colloquium, as well as an instructor in the Genetics course. She is a past recipient of the Dean's Award for Exceptional Graduate Teaching and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching. She is the leader of the Genetics, Genomic and Development graduate training program. She is also the Co-Director of the Genomics Resource Core and the Director of Research for the Department of Urology

Using a molecular genetic approach, we are studying a number of common diseases including prostate and testicular cancer, diabetes, schizophrenia and Paget's disease of the bone. For our studies of prostate cancer, we are looking at the role of genetic variation in prostate cancer risk. We are currently conducting a series of molecular epidemiological studies in an attempt to identify variants in prostate-related genes that increase an individual's risk for prostate cancer. In collaboration with Dr. Ian Thompson, Chair of the Department of Urology, we are studying three populations (Hispanic Caucasians, non-Hispanic Caucasians and African Americans) gathered from the San Antonio area. This research if funded by the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society.

In collaboration with Dr. Teresa Johnson-Pais, we are using comparative "genomic" hybridization to identify regions of loss and gain in prostate cancer specimens. We are currently characterizing these regions for putative tumor suppressor genes and/or oncogenes. Once genes are identified from these regions of loss and gain, we use a cell biology approach to manipulate the expression of these genes in established cell lines. From these experiments, we are currently exploring the role of a number of genes in prostate cancer progression.

Paraffin embedded prostate specimen hybridized with a bacterial artificial chromosome that appeared to be deleted by comparative genomic hybridization.
Closest picture is the normal adjacent prostate cells and the picture on the right is the prostate tumor. The tumor has a homozygous deletion of a region of chromosome 18.

In collaboration with Dr. Donna Lehman, we are looking at the role of genetic variation in the predisposition for diabetes in a large Hispanic cohort. We have recently identified variants in a number of genes that appear to play a role in diabetes susceptibility. A similar approach for identifying schizophrenia genes in a Costa Rican population is being conducted in collaboration with Drs. Michael Escamilla and Consuelo Walss-Bass.

PUBLICATIONS:
Beuten J, Gelfond JA, Martinez-Fierro ML, Weldon KS, Crandall AC, Rojas-Martinez A, Thompson IM, Leach RJ. (2009) Association of chromosome 8q variants with prostate cancer risk in Caucasian and Hispanic men. Carcinogenesis. 2009 Aug;30(8):1372-9.

Beuten J, Gelfond JA, Franke JL, Weldon KS, Crandall AC, Johnson-Pais TL, Thompson IM, Leach RJ. (2009) Single and multigenic analysis of the association between variants in 12 steroid hormone metabolism genes and risk of prostate cancer. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2009 Jun;18(6):1869-80.

Walss-Bass C, Soto-Bernardini MC, Johnson-Pais T, Leach RJ, Ontiveros A, Nicolini H, Mendoza R, Jerez A, Dassori A, Chavarria-Siles I, Escamilla MA, Raventos H. (2009) Methionine sulfoxide reductase: a novel schizophrenia candidate gene. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet. 2009 Mar 5;150B(2):219-25.

Rhodes EC, Johnson-Pais TL, Singer FR, Ankerst DP, Bruder JM, Wisdom J, Hoon DS, Lin E, Bone HG, Simcic KJ, Leach RJ. (2008) Sequestosome 1 (SQSTM1) mutations in Paget's disease of bone from the United States. Calcif Tissue Int. 2008 Apr;82(4):271-7.

Torkko KC, van Bokhoven A, Mai P, Beuten J, Balic I, Byers TE, Hokanson JE, Norris JM, Barón AE, Lucia MS, Thompson IM, Leach RJ. (2008) VDR and SRD5A2 polymorphisms combine to increase risk for prostate cancer in both non-Hispanic White and Hispanic White men. Clin Cancer Res. 2008 May 15;14(10):3223-9.