Remi V. Klotz, PhD

Assistant Professor of Research
rklotz@som.umaryland.edu

Research

Remi Klotz, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Research in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and a member of the Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center. As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Min Yu’s lab at USC, he showed that circulating tumor cells (CTCs) expanded ex vivo from patients with breast cancer recapitulate human metastatic disease in mice. He also identified SEMA4D as a cell-surface receptor that helps CTCs cross the blood–brain barrier (Cancer Discovery, 2020). Dr. Yu founded CanTraCer Biosciences on this discovery, and Remi serves as its Chief Scientific Officer, leading a preclinical antibody–drug conjugate program from target validation through antibody characterization and payload–linker selection. In the lab, he studies how disseminated cancer cells remain quiescent in the brain before resuming growth, focusing on circadian and heme-metabolism programs and the perivascular niche. His work combines patient samples, single-cell and spatial multi-omics, genome-wide CRISPR screens, and in vivo brain metastasis models. He has also applied single-cell profiling beyond cancer, including the crew of SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission (Nature) and COVID-19 studies (Nature Communications).

Education

• 2005-2008 B.S., Cellular Biology, University of Lorraine, France
• 2008-2010 Master, Biology and Health, University of Lorraine, France
• 2010-2014 Ph.D., Cancer Biology, University of Lorraine, France
• Thesis Advisor: Phillipe Becuwe and Stéphanie Grandemange
  Title: Role of Damaged DNA Binding 2 protein in the response of breast
  tumor cells to therapeutic agents

Hobbies

Outside the lab, Remi bakes, ferments everything from vegetables to water kefir, tends a container garden he monitors a little too closely, and shoots film on an old Nikon FE. He follows geopolitics closely, and the Real Housewives just as closely. He will argue that a Bravo reunion and a G7 summit follow similar rules: shifting alliances, strategic leaks, and nobody ever admitting they were wrong.