Javascript must be enabled to use this form.

View Profile	Home Browse Faculty Facility Research Consortia Training Grants Courses Search Support About rSp Help and FAQ's Contact Us	GCC Home
Faculty Profile Last Modified Time: 08:47:47 AM Tue, 14 Apr 2020   Contact Information David Loose Associated Profiles  Associate Professor & Director, Quantitative Genomics & Microarray Core Lab, UT Health Science Center at Houston   Medical School Building, Room No.: 4.130    David.S.Loose@uth.tmc.edu     (713) 500-7440    Estrogens, Genes, Cyclooxygenase 1, Endometrial Neoplasms, Phosphoenolpyruvate Carboxykinase (GTP), Messenger RNA, Prostaglandin-Endoperoxide Synthases, Ketoconazole    Associated Profiles Research and Expertise Affiliations Appointments  Research and Expertise Research Interests   In general terms, my laboratory is interested in mechanisms that control gene expression and cell growth. Over the last few years, we have focused on identifying genes that are aberrantly expressed in endometrial cancer, which is the most common gynecologic cancer. To do this we employ several approaches including DNA and RNA microarray analysis of normal and malignant endometrium. We have determined that many signaling pathways can influence the rate of growth in the endometrium. One of these pathways is the wnt-signaling pathway. Wnts are glycoproteins that act a ligands; they interact with cell-surface receptors called frizzled that can produce downstream signals. This system is very complex: there are 19 wnts, 10 frizzleds, several antagonists such as sFRP, and a least 3 downstream pathways. The illustration depicts the "canonical" pathway that is mediated by wnt-induced stabilization of ß-catenin, but wnts can also induce signals via the "planar" polarity pathway, mediated by jun kinase, and the "calcium" pathway, mediated by NF-AT. Abnormal signals in any of these pathways can lead to disease. We have found that alteration of the canonical signals can leads to abnormal growth in the endometrium. We can detect early cancer by measuring the levels of expression of several genes. One of the best of these biomarkers is sFRP4 (secreted Frizzled-Related Protein). sFRP's (there are 5 in humans, sFRP1-5). We have found that sFRP4 is expression is reduced nearly by 90% in tumors compared to normal endometrium. This lead us to examine the role of sFRP4 in regulating cell growth and we found that elevating expression of sFRP4 had a profound inhibitory effect on growth of a model endometrial cell line. We are currently performing studies to determine if sFRP is in fact a tumor-supressor.  Publications/Creative Works Click here to search for this faculty member's publications on PubMed.  Affiliations  Research Consortia John S. Dunn GCC for Chemical Genomics  Training Grants Training in Pharmacological Sciences  Appointments Title Department / School Institution Associate Professor & Director Quantitative Genomics & Microarray Core Lab UT Health Science Center at Houston

powering - The Partnership
Important Disclaimer: The responsibility for the accuracy of the information contained on these pages lies with the authors and user providing such information.