An internationally recognized leader in breast cancer research, Dr. Robert Clarke studies how hormones (endogenous and exogenous) and related factors affect breast cancer, and how breast cancers become resistant to endocrine and cytotoxic chemotherapies. He has expertise in the fields of antiestrogens, aromatase inhibitors, cell signaling, drug resistance, estrogens, bioinformatics, and gene expression microarrays.

Dr. Clarke has developed a series of hormone resistant breast cancer models that are now widely used in the field, and he continues to develop new experimental models. He is currently working on the development and application of genomic and novel bioinformatic methods in translational studies in both humans and experimental models. In other research, Dr. Clarke and his colleagues have recently identified a new molecular signaling network in breast cancer that involves several novel oncogenes and suppressor genes, and appears to contribute to the hormonal regulation of cell proliferation and cell death.

Currently, Dr. Clarke leads two multinational molecular medicine studies in breast cancer, one funded by the N.I.H. (National Cancer Institute) and one by the Department of Defense (Breast Cancer Research Program), which include investigators from Georgetown University, Virginia Tech, the Catholic University of America, and the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). He also leads the caBIG team at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University and he is regularly invited to speak about his research at international and national meetings. Representative publications from his bibliography can be found elsewhere in this profile. Currently, Dr. Clarke chairs an NIH peer-review study section for the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine. He also serves on the editorial boards of over a dozen international peer review journals including Cancer Research, Clinical Cancer Research, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, and British Journal of Cancer. Dr. Clarke also is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, and a Fellow of the Institute of Biology (U.K.).

Dr. Clarke is Co-chair, Division of Molecular Endocrinology, Nutrition and Obesity (Department of Oncology); Co-Director, Breast Cancer Program (Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center); and
Secretary/Treasurer, Georgetown University Faculty Senate.