The Department of Medicine is honored to announce the promotion of faculty member Christopher Clarke, Ph.D. to Research Associate Professor of Medicine, division of Hematology and Oncology. Dr. Clarke currently serves as an investigator at the Stony University Brook Cancer Center.
Dr. Clarke received his PhD from the University of Manchester in 2005 and undertook postdoctoral training at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina, in the lab of Dr. Yusuf Hannun.
In 2011, Dr. Clarke moved to Stony Brook as a research scientist when Dr. Hannun was recruited as the Stony Brook Cancer Center Director. After successfully obtaining a number of pilot and intramural grants, Dr. Clarke was promoted to Assistant Professor of Research in the Department of Medicine and the Cancer Center in 2017. His research aims to understand how the dysregulation in metabolism of sphingolipids, a class of bioactive molecules, helps drive cancer development and progression, and how this can be exploited therapeutically.
He currently has two major areas of interest: (1) Understanding how oncogenes ‘reprogram’ sphingolipid metabolism to promote cancer metastasis; (2) Defining the role of sphingolipids in chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity. The goals of this work are to develop novel drugs that target sphingolipid metabolism and that can improve cancer treatment.
The Stony Brook Cancer Center’s mission focuses on three core areas — research, clinical care and education — all of which lead to improved care for the community. Their mission is to reduce the suffering from cancer by providing world-class multidisciplinary care close to home, conducting innovative research, educating patients and healthcare professionals, and partnering with our community to reach the underserved populations.
In 2020, Dr. Clarke was one of five recipients of the 2020 Department of Medicine Pilot Project Grant awards for his work as principal investigator on the research titled "Serum ceramide as a novel biomarker of anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity." In 2021, Dr. Clarke successfully secured two R01 research grants from the National Institute of Health.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Clarke on this well-deserved promotion. We thank him for his outstanding contributions to his division, our department and our institution, and we wish him continued success in his future research endeavors.
