Assistant Professor
Division of Hematology and Oncology, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Department of Pediatrics, The Ohio State University Wexner College of Medicine
Ryan Roberts, MD, PhD, is a physician in the Division of Hematology, Oncology and Blood and Marrow Transplant at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and a principal investigator in the Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Diseases at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s. Dr. Roberts is an assistant professor of pediatrics and a member of the Translational Therapeutics research program at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. He is a graduate of the Medical Scientist Training Program at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. He completed his residency in pediatrics and a Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant fellowship at Nationwide Children’s. A physician-scientist, Dr. Roberts specializes in treating childhood sarcomas. He has led the Osteosarcoma Biology Committee of the Children’s Oncology Group since 2020.
The Roberts laboratory studies the processes that lead to metastasis in osteosarcoma and other pediatric solid tumors. Using murine models of metastasis, tumor-on-lung organoid systems, single-cell analytical systems, and conventional cell biology, his team has identified tumor-host signaling interactions critical to metastasis development in the lung. Their discoveries show that disseminated tumor cells exhibiting divergent phenotypes and can cooperate to manipulate the behavior of lung tissues in ways that facilitate the establishment and growth of metastatic lesions. Active research projects include pre-clinical validation of candidate therapies, elucidation of tumor-lung signaling pathways that drive metastasis in osteosarcoma, and identification of ways in which tumor cells cooperate with each other to drive malignant progression.