Ralph DeBerardinis

Ralph DeBerardinis received a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, PA, then obtained M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He was the first trainee in the combined Pediatrics – Medical Genetics Residency Program at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and received board certification in Pediatrics, Medical Genetics and Clinical Biochemical Genetics. He joined the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 2008 and is now the Joel B. Steinberg, MD Chair in Pediatrics and Robert L. Moody, Sr. Faculty Scholar at the Children’s Research Institute (CRI) of UT Southwestern. Dr. DeBerardinis also serves as clinical Chief of Pediatric Genetics and Metabolism and directs the Genetic and Metabolic Disease Program in the CRI, a multidisciplinary research group with the overarching goal of understanding how metabolism influences tissue health and disease and using this information to develop better ways to diagnose and treat disease. Dr. Deberardinis’ laboratory studies the role of altered metabolic states in childhood inborn errors of metabolism and cancer. His lab has focused on the use of metabolomics and isotope tracers to understand metabolic reprogramming in diseased tissue. The lab uses these techniques to uncover novel metabolic liabilities in cancer, and was among the first to use intra-operative isotope infusions to understand fuel preferences in living human tumors in vivo. Current interests include understanding the mechanistic basis of metabolic heterogeneity in human cancer and developing new ways to assess the evolution of metabolic phenotypes during cancer progression.