Program Director

Project Director: Prescott Deininger
            Dr. Deininger obtained his PhD in Physical Chemistry in 1978 at UC, Davis.  His first postdoctoral training was spent at UC, San Diego, with Dr. Theodore Friedmann, where he began DNA sequencing studies and completed the sequence of the polyoma viral genome and was the first to clone and analyze human Alu repeats.  He then spent a year as a NATO postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Frederic Sanger in Cambridge, England where he began the sequencing project of the EBV genome and developed the random-shearing strategy used for shotgun sequencing large DNA segments.
            In 1981, Dr. Deininger became an assistant professor of Biochemistry at LSUHSC and advanced to full professor.  In 1989-1990 he spent a year as an American Cancer Society Scholar at Harvard Medical School where he developed the first laboratory-designed dominant negative mutant, allowing the blocking of the Platelet-Derived Growth Factor.  In 1994 Dr. Deininger became the Associate Director for Basic Sciences of the Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center.  It was here that he began more than a decade of productive collaborations with Dr. Bronya Keats, past-co-Director of the COBRE.
            Dr. Deininger is currently the Interim Director of the Tulane Cancer Center. He has also served as the Associate Director for Basic Research and Zimmerman Distinguished Chair of Basic Cancer Research since 1998.   During this period he has worked toward a functional alliance between the two Cancer Centers.  In 2002 the Louisiana Cancer Research Consortium was formed, where Dr. Deininger serves as co-Director and co-Program Leader of Cancer Genetics.  Dr. Deininger additionally serves as a Professor of Epidemiology and holds adjunct appointments in the departments of Biochemistry, Pathology, the Hayward Genetics Center at Tulane and the Genetics Department at LSUHSC.
            Dr. Deininger had been continuously funded as a PI on NIH R01 grants since 1981, often on two R01 grants simultaneously and co-PI of others.  He serves as an executive editor of the journals Gene and Analytical Biochemistry, and is on the editorial boards of several other journals.
            Dr. Deininger continues to run an active laboratory carrying out studies of the role of mobile elements on the stability of the human genome.  He has over 150 peer-reviewed manuscripts.

Bronya Keats
            Dr. Keats received her PhD from the Australian National University in 1976 and spent five years in the Population Genetics Laboratory at the University of Hawaii as an assistant researcher.  In 1982 she accepted an assistant professor position at LSU Health Sciences Center, was promoted to associate professor in 1986, full professor in 1991 and was appointed Director of the Molecular and Human Genetics Center of Excellence in 1998 and Chair of the Department of Genetics in 2000.
            Much of Dr. Keats’ research has revolved around genetic mapping and gene identification studies in humans and mouse, in particular disorders in the Acadian population, focusing on hearing loss and hereditary ataxias.  She has been awarded substantial funding from the NIH as well as other entities, including the Louisiana Board of Regents, the Foundation Fighting Blindness, the National Ataxia Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Muscular Dystrophy Association.  
           Dr. Keats retired from LSUHSC in July of 2008 and has returned to Australia.