Amanda Ewart Toland, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology & Medical Genetics
Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Human Genetics
998 Biomedical Research Tower
460 W. 12th Ave.
Columbus, OH 43210
Phone: (614)-247-8185
Fax: (614)-688-8675
Amanda.toland@osumc.edu

Research Interests:
Dr. Toland’s laboratory is interested in the identification of human cancer susceptibility genes with a particular focus on identifying combinations of susceptibility genes that work together to influence an individual’s risk of developing cancer.   Because traditional genetic methods for the identification of low risk genes are less then ideal, the laboratory employs an integrated approach using mouse models, tumor imbalance data, tumor expression data, and human population studies to address this problem. 

Using an integrated mouse-human approach, we identified a variant in Aurora-A (STK15) that modestly increases risk of developing breast, ovarian, prostate, non-melanoma skin, lung, esophageal, and colon cancers.  From our mouse models, we know that a gene mapping to the Aurora-A locus interacts with two other genes.  When a mouse carries susceptibility alleles at all three loci, the risk of developing cancer is 8-9 times higher then carrying susceptibility alleles at none of these loci.  A major focus of the laboratory is to identify the gene at one of these loci, Skts5, using our combined mouse/human approach.  Once a top candidate gene has been identified, we will study the gene using cell culture, mouse models and a variety of other techniques to determine the mechanism underlying the cancer risk and why the combination with Aurora-A is important.

Education & Training:

Franklin and Marshall College, 1990, B.A. in Biology
University of Utah, 1996, Ph.D. Human Genetics
University of California San Francisco, 1996-1999 Medical Genetics Fellowship & Postdoctoral research, “Identification of infertility modifier loci in an obese mouse model”
UCSF, 1999-2002  Postdoctoral research, “Identification of human cancer modifier genes”

Select Publications:

Ewart-Toland, A, Briassouli, P, de Koning, JP, Mao, J-H, Yuan, J, Chan, F., MacCarthy-Morrogh, L, Ponder, BAJ, Nagase, H, Burn, J, Ball, S, Almeida, M, Linardopoulos, S, and Balmain A. Identification of Stk6/STK15 as a candidate modifier of cancer risk in mouse and man. Nat. Genet. 34:403-412, 2003

Ewart-Toland, A, Chan, J, Yuan, J, Balmain, A. and Ma, J. TGFB-1 polymorphisms may be associated with late stage prostate cancer.  Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 13: 759-764, 2004.

Dai,Q,  Cai, Q-Y, Shu, X-O, Ewart-Toland, A, Wen, W-Q, Balmain, A, Gao, Y-T, and Zheng, W. Synergistic effects of STK15 gene polymorphisms and endogenous estrogen exposure in the risk of breast cancer. Cancer Epidemiol, Biomarkers Prev. 13: 2065-2070, 2004.

Ewart-Toland, A and Balmain, A.  The Genetics of Cancer Susceptibility: From Mouse to Man. Tox. Pathol. 32(Suppl. 1): 26-30, 2004.

Ewart-Toland, A, Dai, Q, Gao, Y-T, Nagase, H, Dunlop, MG, Farrington, SM, Barnetson, RA, Anton-Culver, H, Peel, D, Ziogas, A, Lin, D, Miao, X, Sun, T, Ostrander, EA, Stanford, JL, Langlois, M, Chan, JM, Yuan, J, Harris, CC, Bowman, ED, Clayman, GL, Lippman, SM, Lee, JJ, and Balmain, A. Aurora-A/STK15 T+91A is a general low penetrance cancer susceptibility gene: a meta-analysis of multiple cancer types. Carcinogenesis, 26: 1368-1373, 2005.