Ruben Dries, PhD
Assistant Professor, Medicine
Biography
Ruben Dries, PhD combines computational data analysis with novel experimental approaches and technologies to understand basic biological concepts in health and disease. These insights could then be leveraged to target tumor specific processes or inhibit the development of treatment resistance. These interests grew dynamically throughout his research career. In his early studies Dr. Dries developed a systems biology approach to dissect the regulatory network of neural differentiating embryonic stem cells and used this knowledge at a later stage to understand how cancer cells transcriptionally respond to targeted therapies and other stress factors. More recently, he expanded this area by focusing on how cells can spatially communicate within their microenvironment and build tools to facilitate these type of analyses.
As a young and dynamic group his lab works together as a team in the following areas:
1) Establishing multi-cellular breast cancer models that better reflect spatial tumor heterogeneity
2) Building tools to explore and quantify cellular cross-talk
3) Assess the contribution of supporting cells to cancer cells within the breast tumor microenvironment
4) Document the gradual response to targeted therapy at the transcriptional and chromatin level in breast cancer cells
Other Positions
- Assistant Professor, Computational Biomedicine, Medicine, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
- Associate Member, Center for Regenerative Medicine, Boston University
- Graduate Faculty (Primary Mentor of Grad Students), Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Graduate Medical Sciences
Education
- Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, PhD
- Katholieke Univ Leuven, PhD
- Katholieke Univ Leuven, MS
- Katholieke Univ Leuven, BS
Publications
- Published on 1/12/2024
Reinecke JB, Gross AC, Cam M, Garcia LJ, Cannon MV, Dries R, Gryder BE, Roberts RD. Aberrant activation of wound healing programs within the metastatic niche facilitates lung colonization by osteosarcoma cells. bioRxiv. 2024 Jan 12. PMID: 38260361.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 11/27/2023
Chen JG, Chávez-Fuentes JC, O'Brien M, Xu J, Ruiz E, Wang W, Amin I, Sarfraz I, Guckhool P, Sistig A, Yuan GC, Dries R. Giotto Suite: a multi-scale and technology-agnostic spatial multi-omics analysis ecosystem. bioRxiv. 2023 Nov 27. PMID: 38077085.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 3/7/2023
Wang Y, Sarfraz I, Teh WK, Sokolov A, Herb BR, Creasy HH, Virshup I, Dries R, Degatano K, Mahurkar A, Schnell DJ, Madrigal P, Hilton J, Gehlenborg N, Tickle T, Campbell JD. Matrix and analysis metadata standards (MAMS) to facilitate harmonization and reproducibility of single-cell data. bioRxiv. 2023 Mar 07. PMID: 36945543.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 3/7/2023
Wang Y, Sarfraz I, Teh WK, Sokolov A, Herb BR, Creasy HH, Virshup I, Dries R, Degatano K, Mahurkar A, Schnell DJ, Madrigal P, Hilton J, Gehlenborg N, Tickle T, Campbell JD. Matrix and analysis metadata standards (MAMS) to facilitate harmonization and reproducibility of single-cell data. bioRxiv. 2023 Mar 07. PMID: 36945543.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 12/1/2022
Ennis CS, Llevenes P, Qiu Y, Dries R, Denis GV. The crosstalk within the breast tumor microenvironment in type II diabetes: Implications for cancer disparities. Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). 2022; 13:1044670. PMID: 36531496.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 9/22/2022
Sengupta S, Das S, Crespo AC, Cornel AM, Patel AG, Mahadevan NR, Campisi M, Ali AK, Sharma B, Rowe JH, Huang H, Debruyne DN, Cerda ED, Krajewska M, Dries R, Chen M, Zhang S, Soriano L, Cohen MA, Versteeg R, Jaenisch R, Spranger S, Romee R, Miller BC, Barbie DA, Nierkens S, Dyer MA, Lieberman J, George RE. Mesenchymal and adrenergic cell lineage states in neuroblastoma possess distinct immunogenic phenotypes. Nat Cancer. 2022 Oct; 3(10):1228-1246. PMID: 36138189.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 6/28/2022
Ikonomou L, Magnusson M, Dries R, Herzog EL, Hynds RE, Borok Z, Park JA, Skolasinski S, Burgess JK, Turner L, Mojarad SM, Mahoney JE, Lynch T, Lehmann M, Thannickal VJ, Hook JL, Vaughan AE, Hoffman ET, Weiss DJ, Ryan AL. Stem cells, cell therapies, and bioengineering in lung biology and disease 2021. Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol. 2022 Sep 01; 323(3):L341-L354. PMID: 35762622.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 4/1/2022
Del Rossi N, Chen JG, Yuan GC, Dries R. Analyzing Spatial Transcriptomics Data Using Giotto. Curr Protoc. 2022 Apr; 2(4):e405. PMID: 35384407.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 3/1/2022
Vanuytsel K, Villacorta-Martin C, Lindstrom-Vautrin J, Wang Z, Garcia-Beltran WF, Vrbanac V, Parsons D, Lam EC, Matte TM, Dowrey TW, Kumar SS, Li M, Wang F, Yeung AK, Mostoslavsky G, Dries R, Campbell JD, Belkina AC, Balazs AB, Murphy GJ. Multi-modal profiling of human fetal liver hematopoietic stem cells reveals the molecular signature of engraftment. Nat Commun. 2022 03 01; 13(1):1103. PMID: 35232959.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 10/1/2021
Dries R, Chen J, Del Rossi N, Khan MM, Sistig A, Yuan GC. Advances in spatial transcriptomic data analysis. Genome Res. 2021 10; 31(10):1706-1718. PMID: 34599004.
Read at: PubMed
View 24 more publications: View full profile at BUMC