Ralph DeBerardinis

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Ralph J. DeBerardinis is an American physician-scientist who leads the Division of Pediatric Genetics and Metabolism at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern and is a professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in 2018 and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020. His research focuses on cancer and inherited metabolic disorders in children, using metabolomics and genomics to understand how tumors use nutrients and how metabolic enzymes are affected by mutations. He has earned awards such as the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research and the Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Medicine.

DeBerardinis grew up in the Philadelphia area. He earned a BS from St. Joseph’s University and MD and PhD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, completing his PhD in Haig H. Kazazian Jr.’s lab. He trained in pediatrics and genetics at CHOP and holds board certifications in clinical biochemical genetics, medical genetics, and pediatrics. He did postdoctoral research in Craig Thompson’s lab at the Penn Cancer Center before starting his own lab at UT Southwestern in 2008.

He has served on scientific advisory boards for companies such as Agios Pharmaceuticals, Peloton Therapeutics, and Vida Ventures. By 2022, he had published over 350 papers and had an h-index of 94. He is known for using isotope-tracing metabolomics to study how tumors obtain nutrients and for identifying mutations that alter metabolic enzyme activity.