Heritage Snapshot: Part 165

Dick H. Koobs, MD, PhD (CME Class of 1955), was Emeritus Associate Professor of Pathology in the Loma Linda University School of Medicine. Dick grew up in Illinois and Texas where he attended public schools prior to enrolling at Emmanuel Missionary College (now Andrews University) where he earned a B.A. degree in chemistry in 1950. A year of graduate studies at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, preceded his entry into the School of Medicine at the College of Medical Evangelists, Class of 1955. A rotating internship at Bexar County Hospital in San Antonio confirmed his interest in finding causes for disease and led him to a residency in anatomic and clinical pathology, which he completed at the White Memorial Hospital in 1959. During this time he became interested in serum protein electrophoresis, a new laboratory examination which assisted physicians in the diagnosis of disease. From 1959 to 1961 he fulfilled his military obligation by serving as Chief of the Laboratory Service at the U.S. Army Station Hospital in Nuremberg, Germany. His fascination with the cause of disease led him to graduate study in the Biological Chemistry Department at U.C.L.A., where he earned a PhD degree in 1965. His dissertation, entitled “Mechanism of the Crabtree Effect in Ehrlich-Lettre Cells,” resulted in a paradigm shift in understanding control of energy metabolism in cancer cells. Dr. Koobs continued his cancer research at Loma Linda University after joining the faculty of the School of Medicine in 1965. Another consuming interest—nutritional basis of disease—resulted in his incorporating nutritional issues in both teaching and research. The chemistry of behavior was a series of lectures prepared for medical students depicting the importance of nutrition for all brain functions. Dr. Koobs ended his career at Loma Linda University by serving for seven years in the Laboratory Service of the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center. He retired in 1999. His hobbies have included baseball (in which he lettered during high school), volleyball (in which his Class of 1955 team competed in the National Volleyball Championships and missed being national champs by a sudden-death overtime), roller and ice skating, and golf. A consuming interest of Dr. Koobs has been Bible study, and he wrote extensively in this field.