Ralph DeBerardinis, M.D., Ph.D., a physician-scientist and international leader in research on cancer metabolism, has been named Director of the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development.

Dr. DeBerardinis, whose appointment took effect Sept. 1, said that his goals for the Center include identifying genomic variations related to tractable human phenotypes and developing ways to normalize pathological phenotypes. He plans to recruit faculty in computational genomics, population genetics, and mechanistic- and disease-focused basic science.

“Through our research, core facilities, and teaching, the McDermott Center will continue to be a hub for clinical and scientific aspects of human genetics across the UT Southwestern community,” he said.

Dr. DeBerardinis has been a faculty member since 2008, when he was appointed Assistant Professor of Pediatrics with an appointment in the McDermott Center. In 2011, he joined the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI), and he currently directs CRI’s Genetic and Metabolic Disease Program, which he will continue to lead. Dr. DeBerardinis, now Professor and a member of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, had also served as Division Chief of Genetics and Metabolism in the Department of Pediatrics since 2013.

He earned his medical degree and Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania, where he pursued postdoctoral training in cancer biology. He then completed residencies in pediatrics and medical genetics followed by a fellowship in clinical biochemical genetics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

In 2016, the DeBerardinis Laboratory discovered that lung tumors can utilize lactate as a fuel source, a finding that challenged a nearly century-old observation known as the Warburg effect that considered lactate to be a waste product of tumor metabolism. The research opened new avenues for the study of potential therapeutics as well as new imaging techniques in lung cancer.

His scientific contributions include pioneering new ways to study altered metabolism directly in cancer patients. This has allowed his team to uncover the mechanisms by which tumors use nutrients to produce energy and to identify metabolic pathways that allow tumors to grow and spread. The approach provides researchers with insights impossible to obtain from conventional experiments in cultured cancer cells and is now being used to study metabolism in nearly a dozen forms of human cancer.

As a clinician, Dr. DeBerardinis focuses on pediatric genetics and newborn screening for metabolic disorders. With grant support from federal, state, and philanthropic organizations, his laboratory studies the role of altered metabolic states in human diseases, particularly pediatric inborn errors of metabolism and cancer.

Dr. DeBerardinis was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator in 2018. In 2020, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, and in 2021 he received the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. DeBerardinis succeeds Helen Hobbs, M.D., one of the world’s foremost experts on human genetics and an HHMI Investigator who has led the McDermott Center since 2000. Dr. Hobbs, a Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Genetics and in the McDermott Center, will remain actively engaged at UTSW in research.