Featured Researcher – Ryan Roberts, MD, PhD

Ryan D. Roberts, MD, PhD, is a physician in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and a principal investigator for the Center for Childhood Cancer at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. He is a member of the Translational Therapeutics research program at The James Comprehensive Cancer Center at The Ohio State University and a fierce champion for childhood cancer research.

Osteosarcoma is the most common primary bone tumor afflicting children, adolescents and young adults. Dr. Roberts and his lab team’s main mission is to solve the mysteries of why and when osteosarcoma metastasizes to the lungs. As a graduate of the Medical Scientist Training Program at The Ohio State University, Dr. Roberts actively supports and understands the importance of fostering the next generation of doctors, scientists and researchers and is equally inspired by witnessing new discovery through their eyes.

How does your research serve our patients and our community?

My work focuses largely on cancer called osteosarcoma. This is a tumor of bone tissue that affects teenagers and young adults (it usually occurs within active growth plates). Kids diagnosed with osteosarcoma today get the same standard-of-care treatment as we would have seen 40 years ago. About 40% of them still die from the disease, usually from complications related to lung metastasis. So, this is where we have focused our work—trying to figure out why this bone tumor grows so well in the lungs. If we can understand what “feeds” the tumor in the lung, we might be able to “starve” the tumor of those signals, making metastatic disease preventable and treatable. We have made several discoveries identifying potential new treatments, some of which are being worked into clinical trials to see if the ideas will work. We’re excited to see how our work might impact patients affected by osteosarcoma.

Our approach has embraced several cutting-edge tools, like single-cell sequencing, where we can measure all the genes being expressed within each individual cell within a tumor. We’ve become experts at using these mind-boggling technologies and have helped many other scientists leverage their power to ask and answer their questions. I love doing these types of studies—the technology still blows my mind. It’s like watching a jumbo jet fly—I know that it happens. I understand what makes it happen. Yet, I still can’t believe that it actually works!