Maria Grazia Roncarolo

Dr. Roncarolo is the George D. Smith Professor in Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine, Director of the Center for Definitive and Curative Medicine, and Co-Director of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University.

In 2014, Dr. Roncarolo established the Stanford Center for Definitive and Curative Medicine. The center, which is dedicated to the development of innovative stem cell and gene therapies for patients with currently incurable diseases, spans a wide range of bench and clinical research activities from basic biology through translational research and features its own GMP cell processing and Phase 1 study units.

Dr. Roncarolo has served as the primary investigator in several landmark trials involving the development of innovative stem cell- and gene-based therapies. She worked at DNAX Research Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology in Palo Alto for several years, where she contributed to the discovery of novel cytokines, cell-signaling molecules that are part of the immune response. She studied the role of these cytokines in inducing immunological tolerance and in promoting stem cell growth and differentiation. As Director of the Telethon Institute for Cell and Gene Therapy and the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Dr. Roncarolo was the principal investigator leading the successful gene therapy trial in SCID, a severe life threatening disorder in which patients lack an enzyme critical to DNA synthesis.

Beyond studying new therapies, Dr. Roncarolo has also helped elucidate drivers of disease at the molecular and cellular level, as she has investigated the mechanisms of immune-mediated diseases throughout her career and helped advance the understanding of immunological tolerance. Dr. Roncarolo was the recipient of the outstanding achievement award from the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ESGCT) in 2010 and from the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGCT) in 2017. She is currently the president of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies.