Ralph DeBerardinis was born, raised and educated in the Philadelphia area, earning a B.S. in Biology from St. Joseph’s University (summa cum laude) in 1992, and MD and PhD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. For his thesis work with Dr. Haig H. Kazazian at Penn, Dr. DeBerardinis studied L1 retrotransposons in the mouse and human genomes and determined several aspects of their impact on genome fluidity and evolution. After finishing his MD-PhD training, Dr. DeBerardinis stayed in Philadelphia to become the first trainee in the combined residency program in Pediatrics and Medical Genetics at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), receiving several awards for teaching and clinical care and ultimately achieving board certification in Pediatrics, Medical Genetics and Clinical Biochemical Genetics. Dr. DeBerardinis served as an attending physician for two years in the Section of Biochemical Genetics at CHOP.
Dr. DeBerardinis performed post-doctoral research training in the laboratory of Craig B. Thompson, MD in the Penn Cancer Center from 2004-2007, where he explored the connections between cellular signal transduction and core metabolic pathways in proliferating cells. These studies led to several novel observations connecting growth factor signaling with specific metabolic activities, including glycolysis, glutaminolysis, the Krebs cycle and the synthesis and degradation of fatty acids. These observations raised the possibility that different oncogenic signaling pathways regulate distinct aspects of cellular metabolism, arguing for metabolic synergy among the mutations that cause cancer.
In 2008, Dr. DeBerardinis moved to Dallas to join the faculty of the University of Texas - Southwestern Medical Center as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Genetics. His lab continues to focus on integrating cellular signal transduction and metabolism during both normal cell proliferation and tumorigenesis. He is also an attending physician in the Division of Pediatric Genetics and Metabolism at Children’s Medical Center, where he is involved in the diagnosis and care of children with inborn errors of metabolism.
