Dr. Margo Roberts most recently served as chief scientific officer (CSO) at Lyell Immunopharma, Inc., where she led the clinical development of novel CAR- and TCR- based T cell therapies for solid tumors. Formerly, she served as CSO at Kite Pharma, Inc. (acquired by Gilead Sciences, Inc. in October 2017) starting in 2013, where she built a talented research organization that played an instrumental role in the successful development of the CAR-T therapy Yescarta®, and the clinical advancement of additional CAR/TCR-engineered T-cell therapies. Subsequent to her role as CSO, Dr. Roberts served as senior vice president of Discovery Research at Kite in order to focus on the development of next generation therapeutic approaches, including heading up Kite’s universal allogeneic T-cell programs.
Dr. Roberts has almost three decades of biomedical research experience in both biotechnology and academia, and has been recognized as a top R&D leader by Endpoints News’ Top 20 Women Leaders in Biopharma 2020. Prior to her tenure at Kite, Dr. Roberts was principal scientist and director of Immune and Cell Therapy at Cell Genesys, Inc. where she led the development and application of CAR technology to T-cells and stem cells, culminating in the very first CAR T-cell clinical trial in 1994. Dr. Roberts was also an associate professor at the University of Virginia, has authored more than thirty scientific publications, and is the inventor on thirteen issued U.S. patents and three published U.S. patent applications. Dr. Roberts received both her Bachelor of Science degree with honors and her Ph.D. degree from the University of Leeds in England.