Center for Health Disparities and Molecular Medicine

Faculty profile

Carlos Casiano, PhD

Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Microbiology Associate Director, Center for Health Disparities and Molecular Medicine Director for Research Education and Training Core, Center for Health Disparities Research and Molecular Medicine • University faculty profile • Research interests • Publications Mortensen Hall Loma Linda, California 92350 Phone: (909) 558-9474 Fax: (909) 558-0177 E-mail: ccasiano@llu.edu

Research interests

Dr. Casiano’s general research interest is in the regulation of cell death and survival in human disease, particularly cancer and systemic autoimmunity. Current research in his laboratory focuses on the characterization of stress and survival pathways induced by the “augmented state of cellular oxidative stress” (ASCOS) in prostate cancer. Prostate cancer presents the greatest racial disparity of any cancer in the U.S., with an alarmingly high incidence and mortality in African-American men. An important long-term translational outcome is to elucidate the contribution of ASCOS in the development of prostate cancer.

Dr. Casiano is the associate director of the newly created Loma Linda School of Medicine Center for Health Disparities and Molecular Medicine. He received bachelor and master degrees in biology (emphasis in tumor biology) from the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, and a PhD degree in microbiology from the University of California at Davis. He completed postdoctoral studies in molecular aspects of systemic autoimmunity at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. His graduate and postdoctoral studies were supported by fellowships and assistantships from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Arthritis Foundation, UC Davis, and the University of Puerto Rico. His most recent research has been funded by the NIH (NCMHD and NIAID), and the National Medical Technology Test Bed (administered by the Department of the Army).

Dr. Casiano is very active in NIH-funded programs that seek to eliminate health disparities and increase diversity among biomedical and physician scientists who graduate from Loma Linda University. As Director of the CHDMM’s Research, Education and Training Core EXPORT program, he oversees several programs that provide biomedical research and educational opportunities for underrepresented minority high school, undergraduate, and medical students, such as the Apprenticeship Bridge to College (ABC), Undergraduate Training Program (UTP), and Medical Training Program (MTP). He also serves as co-investigator and faculty mentor in the PhD educational and research training program Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity (IMSD). Dr. Casiano has been the recipient of the Loma Linda University Association of Latin American Students Award for Outstanding Leadership and Support of Minority Students and the Principles of Diversity (2001, 2002, 2003).

Dr. Casiano is actively working at the national level to increase diversity in biomedical research and eliminate cancer health disparities. During the past several years he has been an active member of the Minorities in Cancer Research Council of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR-MICR), serving as council Chair (2006-2007), co-chair of the Minority Scholar Award in Cancer Research committee, co-chair and organizer of the 2005 AACR-MICR Forum on health disparities, and member of the Cancer Health Disparities Think Tank, the AACR Science Education Committee, and the AACR-MICR Jane C. Wright Lectureship committee. Recently, Dr. Casiano was a keynote speaker at the 2006 Temple University Health Care Disparities Symposium. He has also served as review panelist for the IMSD and Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS) programs of the National Institutes of General Biomedical Sciences.

Dr. Casiano’s professional career has also led him to serve in an advisory role for various national and international organizations, including the Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellowship Program of the National Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health, the National Fund for Scientific Research of Belgium, the Catholic University of Leuven, and the Dresden Symposium of Autoantibodies. He has been a reviewer for several biomedical journals, and has been invited speaker in numerous scientific meetings in the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, Brazil, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands.

Selected publications

1. Casiano CA, Mediavilla-Varela M, and Tan EM (2006). Tumor-associated autoantigen arrays for the serological diagnosis of cancer. Molecular and Cellular Proteomics 5:1745-1759
2. Daniels T, Zhang JY, Gutierrez I, Elliott ML, Yamada B, Heeb MJ, Sheets S, Wu X, and Casiano CA (2005) Antinuclear autoantibodies in prostate cancer: immunity to LEDGF/p75, a survival protein highly expressed in prostate tumors and cleaved during apoptosis. Prostate 62:14-26.
3. Pacheco FJ, Servin JA, Dang D, Kim J, Molinaro C, Daniels T, Brown-Bryan TA, and Casiano CA (2005). Involvement of lysosomal cathepsins in the cleavage of topoisomerase I during necrotic cell death. Arthritis & Rheumatism 52: 2133-2145.
4. Shi F, Zhang JY, Rearden A, Elliot M, Nachtsheim D, Daniels T, Casiano CA, Chan EKL, and Tan EM. (2005) Preferential humoral immune response to p90 and p62 in prostate cancer. Prostate 63: 252-258.
5. Ganapathy V and Casiano CA (2004). Autoimmunity to the DFS70 (LEDGF) autoantigen: what exactly are the autoantibodies trying to tell us? Arthritis and Rheumatism 50:684-688.
6. Koziol JA, Zhang JY, Casiano CA, Peng XX, Chan EKL, Feng AC, and Tan EM. (2003) Recursive partitioning as an approach to selection of immune markers for tumor diagnosis. Clinical Cancer Research 9:5120-5126.
7. Zhang JY, Casiano CA, Peng X-X, Koziol J, Chan EKL, and Tan EM (2003) Enhancement of antibody detection in cancer using panel of recombinant tumor-associated antigens. Cancer Epidemiology, Prevention and Detection 12:136-143.
8. Ulloth JE, Casiano CA, and De Leon M (2003) Palmitic and stearic fatty acids induce caspase- dependent and independent cell death in nerve growth factor differentiated PC12 cells. J. Neurochemistry 84: 655-668.
9. Wu X, Daniels T, Molinaro C, Lilly MB, and Casiano CA (2002). Caspase cleavage of the nuclear autoantigen LEDGF/p75 abrogates its pro-survival function: implications for autoimmunity in atopic disorders. Cell Death and Differentiation 9:915-925.
10. Wu X, Molinaro C, Johnson N, and Casiano CA (2001). Secondary necrosis is a source of proteolytically modified forms of specific intracellular autoantigens: implications for autoimmunity. Arthritis & Rheumatism 44:2642-2652.