President and CEO, Kite Pharmaceuticals
Dr. Arie Belldegrun has been closely involved with the founding and advancement of several successful private and public biopharmaceutical companies. In 1996 he founded Agensys, Inc., a biotechnology company, and served as its founding Chairman of the board of directors and as a board member until 2007, when it was acquired by Astellas Pharma Inc. Dr. Belldegrun was also the founding Vice-Chairman of the board of directors and Chairman of the scientific advisory board of Cougar Biotechnology, Inc., a biotechnology company, from 2003 to 2009 when it was acquired by Johnson & Johnson. He currently serves as Chairman of Arno Therapeutics, Inc., Two River Group, and TheraCoat Ltd., and as a board member of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.
Dr. Belldegrun is 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. Prior to joining UCLA, he was at the National Cancer Institute/NIH as a research fellow in surgical oncology and immunotherapy under Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg.
Dr. Belldegrun 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 400 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 (AAGUS).
