An internationally recognized leader in breast cancer research, Dr. Robert Clarke studies how hormones, growth factors, and other related molecules affect breast cancer, and how breast cancers become resistant to hormonal and cytotoxic chemotherapies. He has expertise in the fields of estrogens, antiestrogens, aromatase inhibitors, cell signaling, drug resistance, bioinformatics, and signal transduction.

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 to data from ongoing 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. This integrated network incorporates cell stress signaling, protein misfolding, and communication among the endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria and nucleus of breast cancer cells. Ultimately, this network determines if a breast cancer cell will grow, differentiate or die, and the mechanism by which the cell will die (apoptosis, autophagy, necrosis, senescence), in response to therapy.

Currently, Dr. Clarke leads several multinational molecular medicine studies in breast cancer, in collaboration with Dr. Minetta Liu (LCCC) and colleagues at Virginia Tech and the University of Edinburgh (Scotland). With Dr. Subha Madhavan at LCCC, he leads an NCI-funded In Silico Research Center of Excellence. Dr. Clarke 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. Dr. Clarke recently completed his tenure as Chair of an NIH peer-review study section. He also serves on the editorial boards of over a dozen international peer review journals. For example, Dr. Clarke is a Senior Editor for the journal Cancer Research, a Scientific Editor for Endocrine-Related Cancer, and a member of the Editorial Boards of Clinical Cancer Research, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, Cancer Prevention Research, 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 in the U.K.

Interim Director for the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC), home to 60% of biomedical research at GUMC, and an Associate Vice President of GUMC, Dr. Clarke is Co-Director (with Dr. Claudine Isaacs) of the Breast Cancer Program (Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center) and a member of the Georgetown University Faculty Senate.