Allogene Appoints Zachary J. Roberts as Executive Vice President of Research & Development
January 03, 2023 at 01:00 pm
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Allogene Therapeutics, Inc. announced the appointment of Zachary J. Roberts M.D., Ph.D. to Executive Vice President of Research and Development. The hiring of Dr. Roberts, who previously held clinical leadership roles at Instil Bio and Kite Pharma, underscores the Company's commitment to rapidly advancing its pipeline following recent clinical data illustrating the potential of its AlloCAR T product candidates to induce deep and durable responses. Dr. Roberts will assume the responsibilities of Rafael Amado, M.D. who has resigned to pursue other opportunities. Arun Balakumaran, M.D., Chief Medical Officer and Barbra Sasu, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer will report to Dr. Roberts. Dr. Roberts is a trained immunologist and a board certified oncologist with extensive experience in clinical oncology, including the development of cell therapies. Prior to joining Allogene, Dr. Roberts was Chief Medical Officer of Instil
Bio where he led development of both clinical and pre-clinical programs. Prior to that, Dr. Roberts held various roles of increasing responsibility at Kite Pharma (acquired by Gilead in 2017), where he was instrumental in the development and execution of the ZUMA trials across multiple indications for Yescarta(R), the first autologous CAR T therapy approved for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He holds an M.D. and Ph.D. in immunology from the University of Maryland and completed clinical and post-graduate training at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Allogene Therapeutics, Inc. is a clinical-stage immuno-oncology company. The Company is focused on development of genetically engineered allogeneic T cell product candidates for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. It is focused on four core programs: Large B-Cell Lymphoma (LBCL), Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL), Autoimmune Disease and Renal Cell Carcinoma. It is developing a pipeline of multiple allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell product candidates utilizing protein engineering, gene editing, gene insertion and advanced proprietary T cell manufacturing technologies. Its product candidate, cemacabtagene ansegedleucel, referred to as cema-cel, is an engineered allogeneic CAR T cell product candidate that targets CD19, a protein expressed on the cell surface of B cells and a validated target for B cell driven hematological malignancies. It is focused on developing cema-cel for LBCL and CLL. Its pipeline also includes ALLO-316, ALLO-329 and ALLO-647.