Dr. Peter Leung Wins Western University Alumni of Distinction Award

 

Dr. Peter Leung was recently recognized by the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University with the prestigious 2017 Alumni of Distinction Award for Excellence in Basic Science Research. Dr. Leung earned his PhD at Western in 1979. He is pictured at the ceremony with his wife Lisa Leung and son, Aden Leung.

Following his postdoctoral training in 1982, Dr. Leung joined our department as a tenure-track faculty member, and he remains here to this day. During his career he served as the Head of the Basic Sciences Division, the Director of the Graduate Program in Reproductive and Developmental Sciences and Associate Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Education in the Faculty of Medicine. He was also the Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Women’s Reproductive Health Research Training Program at the Child and Family Research Institute.

For decades, Dr. Leung’s research program has focused on the hormonal determinants of women’s reproductive health and disease, especially on the autocrine and panacrine regulation of ovarian and placental cell function. He was the first to clone and characterize the gene encoding the human gonadotropin releasing hormone receptor, which is a key regulator of the reproductive system, and he was among the first to propose the concept that the two isoforms of the hormone in humans play an important role not only in pituitary gonadotropin secretion but also in other reproductive tissues including ovaries, ovarian cancer and placentas. He has written more than 350 papers, 340 abstracts, five books and 20 book chapters.