Arie Belldegrun

A visionary entrepreneur, Arie is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Allogene Therapeutics, a biotechnology company with a mission to catalyze the next revolution in cancer treatment through the development of allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapy directed at blood cancers and solid tumors. He is also the founding Chairman of Kronos Bio, a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel cancer therapeutics targeting dysregulated transcription. Arie previously founded Kite Pharma, a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the development of innovative cancer immunotherapies where he served as Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer until the acquisition of Kite by Gilead Sciences in October 2017. He remains as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for FosunKite, a joint venture formed between Fosun Pharma and Kite, a Gilead company, for the development of cell therapy in China. Arie has had a distinguished tenure in the life sciences, having been closely involved with the founding and advancement of several successful biopharmaceutical companies including Cougar Biotechnology and Agensys. Abiraterone, developed by Cougar, is a mainstay of therapy for patients with metastatic prostate cancer. He currently serves as Chairman of Two River Group and UroGen Pharma, Ltd., and previously served as a Board member of Cell Design Labs until its acquisition by Gilead in December 2017. Arie is a Co-Founder and Senior Managing Director of Vida Ventures.

Arie is a Professor of Urology, holds the Roy and Carol Doumani Chair in Urologic Oncology, and is Director of the UCLA Institute of Urologic Oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is currently a member of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Strategic Advisory Group.

Prior to joining UCLA, Arie was at the National Cancer Institute/NIH as a research fellow in surgical oncology and immunotherapy under Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg. He completed his M.D. at the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, his post-graduate studies in Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and his residency in Urologic Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He has authored several books in oncology and more than 500 scientific and medical papers related to urological cancers, immunotherapy, gene therapy, and cancer vaccines. He is certified by the American Board of Urology and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American Association of Genitourinary Surgeons.