Ruth A. Keri, PhD is a Full Staff member in the Department of Cancer Sciences at Cleveland Clinic Research. She is also a Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, affiliated with Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) and a Professor of Pharmacology, Genetics and Genome Sciences, and Oncology in the Division General Medical Sciences at CWRU.
Dr. Keri has been the Associate Director for Basic Research in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center since 2011. She earned her doctorate and completed her post-doctoral studies at CWRU where she focused on the molecular endocrine foundations of female reproduction. Her research program specializes in identifying transcriptional and signaling mechanisms that control breast development, cancer initiation, and progression, with the goal of discovering new therapeutic approaches for treating aggressive disease. Her work increasingly focuses on therapeutic resistance (e.g., in triple-negative breast cancer/TNBC), genomic instability, epigenetic regulation, src kinases (like YES1 for resensitizing TNBC to treatment), and combination therapies. To address these topics, she integrates pharmacology, developmental biology, endocrinology, cell biology, and genomics.
Dr. Keri leads a breast cancer working group at the Cleveland Clinic and is a founding leader of the Great Lakes Breast Cancer Symposium. She is also an Associate Editor of Breast Cancer Research and a member of the editorial boards of J. Biological Chemistry, Endocrinology, and Molecular Cancer Research. She has published over 100 papers, has extensively participated in NIH peer review, and has held various leadership positions in scientific societies, including serving on the Board of Directors for the Endocrine Society, underscoring her role in shaping scientific communities.
The Keri Lab
The Keri Lab resides in the Lerner Research Institute at Cleveland Clinic. Our mission is to provide key research findings in breast cancer disease for the scientific community and to train the next generation of scientists. We provide care for each other and are open to collaboration with other lab families. We are fortunate to collaborate with other labs regionally, nationally and internationally.
Our research is driven by curiosity. This curiosity has allowed us to be open to various biological fields in understanding breast cancer. We have often been known for investigating the roles of essential transcription factors in mammary gland development and carcinogenesis. Throughout the years we have also expanded to investigating drug cocktails for treating breast cancer and understanding epigenetic regulation in breast cancer.
Aside from research, we are also focused on training students and postdocs to become valuable members in the scientific community. The Department of Pharmacology and the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center inform us of the latest discoveries in pharmacology and oncology through seminars, respectively. In house, lab members are required to present their latest research (lab meeting) and present a key research article in breast cancer (journal club). Lastly, all members are highly encouraged to attend and present in regional, national and international conferences and to apply for funding provided by various sponsors. Altogether, these activities provide the Keri Lab members knowledge and opportunities to exercise their scientific minds.
My research includes mechanisms of breast cancer initiation, growth, and metastasis, as well as mechanisms of therapeutic response and resistance in cancer.
Research Information
Research Interests
For more than 17 years, my research has focused on the genomic and signaling mechanisms that control mammary gland development and cancer. As reflected by my position as a member of the steering committee for the Gene Expression and Genotyping Core Facility at CWRU, I have significant expertise in the acquisition and use of gene expression profiling data to identify novel factors that may control the phenotypes of breast cancer cells. This has involved generating and using data from cell lines and genetically manipulated mouse models of breast cancer as well as evaluation of publicly available human breast cancer array data. I have designed and used mouse models of disease throughout my research career, including assessing the efficacy of therapeutic agents such as vitamin D analogs, rapamycin, and dasatinib in mammary cancer models. I also have significant experience assessing drug synergy, in vitro and in vivo.
My laboratory extensively uses xenograft models of breast cancer. We also have expertise in the analysis of proliferation and apoptosis, migration and invasion, centrosome defects and genomic instability, and gene-specific chromatin immunoprecipitation as well as immunohistochemistry of mouse and human tissues. As a result, we have an unrivaled capacity to examine the functional significance of pathways and drugs targeting those pathways in mammary development and cancer. Underscoring this ability, I was the co-leader of the Breast Cancer Program-in-Development in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center (Case CCC) before becoming its Associate Director for Basic Research. I also have significant expertise in Pharmacology, having earned my doctoral in this field.