ronald.kaplan@rosalindfranklin.edu
Dr. Ronald S. Kaplan received his BA, MS, and PhD in Biology / Biochemistry from New York University and advanced training as a postdoctoral fellow at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Prior to arriving at RFU, he was a tenured professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the College of Medicine at the University of South Alabama in Mobile.
Dr. Kaplan joined the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (BMB) as a tenured Professor on Aug 1997. A major focus of his laboratory has been the mitochondrial citrate transport protein (i.e., CTP) because of its fundamental importance within hepatic intermediary metabolism, cellular bioenergetics, and lipogenesis. His research has been supported by NIH, NASA, NSF, ADA, JDF, and AHA for over 25 years. In 2006, Dr. Kaplan was promoted to Chairman of BMB. During his 6 years as Chair he successfully recruited four new faculty, each of whom quickly obtained major NIH funding, to establish a Program in Membrane Protein Structural Biology. On July 2010, Dr. Kaplan was appointed to Vice Dean for Research for CMS, and on July 2011 to Vice President for Research for RFU, at which time he relinquished the Chair of BMB. On August 2014 he was promoted to Executive Vice President for Research (RFU). While continuing his research endeavors, Dr. Kaplan’s primary focus is the leadership, advocacy, and oversight of research throughout RFU.
The intellectual creativity and personal skill set that have powered Dr. Kaplan’s research scholarship are the very traits that he applies to his current administrative roles. Thus, Dr. Kaplan: 1) Envisioned and in collaboration with other RFU leaders, led the effort to establish an RFU Center for Health Equity Research. 2) Spearheaded the effort to design and build the new Innovation and Research Park (IRP) and Helix51 Incubator that opened for occupancy on January 2020. 3) Served as Interim Dean of CMS from Aug 2019 to April 2020, and collaboratively led a school- and university-wide team in the preparation and submission of the necessary accreditation visit documentation. Following the concomitant recruitment of a new Dean with national prominence, CMS received full 8-year accreditation. 4) Implemented on July 2018, the first fundamental re-organization, since its inception, of the research structure of the basic sciences at CMS from the traditional, siloed departmental structure to 6 new disease-oriented research centers that emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration. 5) Working with his counterparts at Lake Forest College and DePaul Universities, directs summer research experiential programs for undergraduate students.
As a research scientist, Dr. Kaplan conducted seminal investigations that implicate the CTP as a major actor in endemic metabolic diseases: 1) Cancer - Kaplan RS et al., PMID: 7127281 and 2) Diabetes - Kaplan RS et al., PMID: 2141244; Kaplan RS et al., PMID: 1898008; Kaplan RS et al., PMID: 1838403. His lab was the first to identify and overexpress the gene, then purify and reconstitute the first active eukaryotic mitochondrial CTP - Kaplan RS et al., PMID: 7876161. The Kaplan lab followed their discovery of this novel yeast gene with studies that revealed a putative pathway for citrate translocation – Xu et al., PMID: 10702279; Kaplan RS et al., PMID: 10766832; Ma C et al., PMID: 14561747. With a homology-model in hand (Walters & Kaplan, PMID: 15298898) for the CTP and the recent revelation of a human plasma membrane citrate transporter (PMCT), the Kaplan lab then began to screen small molecule inhibitors to chemotherapeutically target the PMCT. In concert, both the CTP and the PMCT are the cellular conveyers of the metabolite citrate that lies at the crossroads of hepatic intermediary (glucose, ATP, fatty acid) metabolism. The imperative for screening the putative PMCT inhibitors has resulted in the Kaplan lab being the first to identify compounds that differentially inhibit the two citrate transporters (Sun et al., PMCID: PMC2913483). Efforts to identify lead potent inhibitors of the PMCT as potential anticancer agents have continued (Patil SA, Mayor JA, Kaplan RS. Future Med Chem. 2022 May;14(9):665-679. doi:10.4155/fmc-2021-0341)).