Thomas M. Roberts, Ph.D.

Professor of Pathology

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
44 Binney St., Mayer 857
Boston, MA 02115
Tel: 617-632-3049
Fax: 617-632-4770
e-mail:thomas_roberts@dfci.harvard.edu
10 postdoctoral fellows, 2 graduate students

        Research in the Roberts laboratory is centered kinases and kinase inhibitors in cancer.  We work in variety of model systems and utilize approaches varying from systems biology to knockout mice.  In many cases the impetus for this work comes from studies on SV40 and polyoma tumor antigens.  For instance by examining the role of small t in transformation of HMEC, we have adapted telomerase immortalized breast and prostate epithelial cells to take a systems biology approach to kinases and phosphatases.   For years we have been working with Novartis to develop kinase inhibitors and we use these extensively in our model systems.  Thus we can study sensitivity to inhibitors in epithelial cells  or murine tumors to find genes which render animals and tumors more or less sensitive to those inhibitors.  PI 3 kinase( a middle t antigen target) is a particular interest of the lab.   In addition to working to understand the PI3 kinase pathway in greater detail in epithelial cells, we have generated mouse knockouts of the major PI3K isoforms to study the involvement of PI3K in prostate  breast, and brain cancer models.  

References: 

Jean J Zhao, Ole V. Gjoerup, Romesh R. Subramanian, Yuan Cheng, Wen Chen, Thomas M. Roberts, and William C. Hahn  2003  Human mammary  epithelial cell transformation through the activation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase Cancer Cell  3(5):483-95.

Jean J. Zhao, Zhenning Liu, Li Wang, Eyoung Shin, Massimo F. Loda and Thomas M. Roberts   (2005)  The oncogenic properties of mutant p110a and p110b Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinases in human mammary epithelial cells Proc Natl Acad Sci. USA 102(51):18443-8

Shidong Jia  , Zhenning Liu, Sen Zhang,  Pixu Liu, Lei Zhang, Sang Hyun Lee, Jing Zhang, Sabina Signoretti, Massimo Loda, Thomas M. Roberts, and Jean J. Zhao (2008) Kinase-dependent and -independent functions of the p110β phosphoinositide-3-kinase in cell growth, metabolic regulation and oncogenic transformation  Nature  454:776-780