Dr. Rowe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Periodontics and joined The University of Texas Health Science Center in July 2001. He received his PhD from University College London, England where he was formerly an Honorary Senior Lecturer and Senior MRC Research Fellow. Dr. Rowe currently serves as Treasurer of the International Association of Dental Research San Antonio Chapter and his research is funded by two NIH grants (RO1 and RO3) from the National Institute of Arthritic and Musculoskeletal Skin Diseases (NIAMS) and the National Institute of Craniofacial Research (NIDCR). Dr. Rowe was formerly the recipient of a UK Medical Research Council Senior Fellowship.

Research Interests: The research in this group is aimed at increasing our understanding of the molecular bone-renal mechanisms that maintain a healthy mineralized skeleton and dentition.  Since this dynamic-process is disturbed dramatically in many tumor-acquired and inherited diseases we are also studying these diseases in the hope that our findings will help to improve clinical treatment. Recently, in collaboration with an international consortium (HYP-consortium) we successfully identified the primary gene defect in an inherited bone-renal disease, X-linked hypophosphatemic rickets (HYP). This disease is characterized by severe under-mineralization of the skeleton and marked changes in renal-phosphate handling and vitamin D metabolism. We named this novel gene PHEX (acronym: phosphate regulating gene with homologies to endopeptidases on the X-chromosome). This discovery has stimulated new research and provided new reagents aimed at unraveling the molecular pathways downstream of the primary PHEX gene-product defect.  More recently, we were the first to characterize and clone a completely novel bone-matrix protein (MEPE) from patients with tumor-induced osteomalacia. Also, we have demonstrated biological activity of this new MEPE protein and confirmed a direct interaction with PHEX. Our research indicates that a small acidic, protease-resistant MEPE-peptide that we named ASARM-peptide, could potentially be the first ‘biological bisphosphonate’ described. This peptide occurs in MEPE and some related family proteins (SIBLINGs) and the acronym ASARM stands for acidic-serine-aspartate-rich-MEPE-associated motif. The biological and physicochemical properties of the ASARM-peptide are remarkably similar to etidronate, a bisphosphonate. The ASARM-peptide (like etidronate) inhibits mineralization in-vivo and in-vitro and impacts on renal phosphate handling.

This page was last updated on September 2004 by
D.Garza (garzad2@uthscsa.edu)