Professor of Breast Biology

Deputy Director of the Prevent Breast Cancer Research Unit and  Director of the Lobular Moon Shot Project at Manchester Breast Centre:

http://www.breastcentre.manchester.ac.uk/

Founder Member and Treasurer, European Network for Breast Development and Cancer (ENBDC):

http://www.enbdc.org/

Founder Member, EurOPDX Consortium:

http://europdx.eu/

Editorial Board: Breast Cancer Research and Journal of Mammary Gland Biology and Neoplasia

Latest Publications:

Simões BM, Pedley R, McCloskey CW, Roberts M, Reed AD, Twigger AJ, Tharmapalan P, Caruso A, Cabral S, Wilby AJ, Harrison H, Zhou Y, Greenhalgh A, Alghamdi S, Forestiero M, Lopez J, Roche J, Jie R, Khan MA, Squires S, Astley SM,  Harkness EF, Santiago-Gómez A, Spence K, Ritchie J, Pritchard S, Lim Y, Sherratt MJ, Andò S, Howell A, Evans DG, Gilmore AP, Khaled WT, Khokha R, *Clarke RB and *Howell SJ (2025) Anti-progestin therapy targets hallmarks of breast cancer risk. Nature, 648, 736–745 , doi: 10.1038/s41586-025-09684-7. *Co-Senior Authors  

Cabral S*, Parsons J*, Harrison H, Kedward T, Fullwood P, Spence K, Lefley DV, Barden D, Ferguson J, Watson J, Tsafou K, Behan C, Dunnning MJ, Ali N, Gyorffy B, Brown JE, Smith MP, Ottewell PD, **O’Brien C, **Francavilla C and **Clarke RB (2025) Proteomics Identifies Osteomodulin as a Promoter of Breast Cancer Bone Metastasis via CDK1 Activation. *Co-First Authors, **Co-Senior Authors. BioRxiv: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.03.565489 

Sorlie T and Clarke RB (Eds.) (2025) A Guide to Breast Cancer Research: From Cellular Heterogeneity and Molecular Mechanisms to Therapy. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, Springer Nature.

A Guide to Breast Cancer Research: From Cellular Heterogeneity and Molecular Mechanisms to Therapy | SpringerLink

Publications on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=h_gpwEwAAAAJ

Rob Clarke is Professor of Breast Biology at the University of Manchester. He was co-founder of the Manchester Breast Centre, which comprises more than 40 academics active in breast research, and served as its Director from 2015-2024. He is currently Director of the Lobular Moon Shot Project and Deputy Director of the Prevent Breast Cancer Research Unit.

Rob was awarded both a Cancer Research UK Fellowship and the first ever Breast Cancer Now Fellowship, and established the Breast Biology Group that he has led for the last 25 years.  Rob co-founded the European Network for Breast Development and Cancer (2007) and the EuroPDX Consortium (2013), and is a member of the MRC Clinical Training Panel and the Swiss National Science Foundation Oncology Panel.

Rob’s research achievements in breast cancer include the first use of Ki67 as a proliferation biomarker in neoadjuvant tamoxifen and fulvestrant studies, the discovery of the importance of paracrine signalling downstream of estrogen and progesterone receptors regulating normal breast progenitors, tissue collagen and density, and establishing the role of stem cell signalling pathways including cytokines in breast cancer therapy resistance and metastasis.  He has published over 180 research papers in these fields.

The goal of our research is to understand the hierarchical relationship between cells in breast epithelium in order to gain an insight into the processes that underlie cancer initiation in this tissue. The primary aim, therefore, is to characterise and to understand the regulation of mammary epithelial stem cells, particularly luminal progenitors, since these are likely to be the targets of cancer-initiating events, and may be the underlying tumourigenic cells in breast cancers. We also wish to understand how steroid hormones such as oestrogen regulate this cellular hierarchy since both normal and tumour development is hormone dependent.

Development of the mammary gland involves the formation of collecting ducts and lobules, both of which are bilayered epithelia made up of contractile myo-epithelial and milk-producing luminal cells. One current interest is which signalling pathways downstream of ovarian hormones  regulate stem cell self-renewal. We are exploit single cell gene expression analyses, spatial analyses, functional genomics and proteomics to identify novel pathways that participate in stem cell regulation.

Identification of stem cell self-renewal pathways will be important for future cancer prevention and therapy. An established concept in leukemia as well as in neural and epithelial cancers, including breast cancer, is that only a minority of cells, i.e. the “cancer stem cells”, have the capacity to initiate tumours. Characterising the cancer stem cell and understanding the molecular basis for dysregulated self-renewal is crucial for identification of a) new targets for effective interventions in therapy resistance, and b) disseminated cells in micrometastases which can initiate tumours.

A second theme in the lab is breast cancer prevention. We aim to investigate basic breast biology, identify early changes that occur in normal tissues and perform preclinical studies that will provide the rationale for novel prevention trials. 

Overall, our investigations will lead to an increased understanding of the biology of the normal and malignant human breast which, in turn, will lead to the development of new strategies or new targets for prevention of primary and secondary breast cancer.

• Cancer Stem Cells Lecturer for final year BSc Biology and MSc Oncology students.
• Academic Advisor for Biomedical Sciences with French BSc students.
• Project supervisor for Final Year BSc Biology Students.
• Proposal development and project supervisor for third and fourth year MSci Students.

• Bruno Simões, PhD - Prevent Breast Cancer Research Unit Senior Fellow
• Khalid Abuelgasim, PhD - Cara Research Fellow
• Casey Broadbent, PhD - Postdoc Research Associate
• Kath Spence, BSc - Lobular Moon Shot Project Research Associate
• Rebecca Murray, BA - Lobular Moon Shot Project Research Co-odinator
• Sara Cabral, MSci - EPSRC Advanced Biomaterials PhD Student (Co-supervised with Hannah Harrison)
• Martha Gutteridge, MSc - MRC DTP PhD student (Co-supervised with Bruno Simoes, Sacha Howell and Martin Baron)
• Erin Durston-Hillyer, MSci - BBSRC NWD PhD Student (Co-supervised with Bruno Simoes, Sacha Howell, Andrew Gilmore and Clair Baldock)
• Grace Eckersley, BSc - MRC iCASE PhD Student (Co-supervised with Sankari Nagarajan and Hannah Harrison)
• Valentina Sergi, BSc - Visiting PhD student, University of Catania, Italy (Co-supervised with Bruno Simoes)
• Clare Papali - Msci Project Student

Member of the Medical Research Council Clinical Training and Career Development Panel, 2022-2026.

Member of the Swiss National Science Foundation, Division Biology and Medicine Panel, 2022-2028.

Member of the NIHR Cancer Research Transatlantic Development and Skills Enhancement Award Committee 2023-24.

Member of the Breast Cancer Now Centre (ICR and KCL London) Quinquennial Review and Dormancy Grant Panels 2024

BSc (Hons): Biology with European Studies (University of Sussex and Université Grenoble Alpes)

PhD: Molecular Oncology (University of Manchester)