Kole Roybal, PhD

Kole Roybal, PhD, is an affiliate investigator at Gladstone Institutes. He is also an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at UC San Francisco (UCSF), a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator, and a Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy investigator.

Roybal earned a PhD in immunology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and trained as a postdoctoral fellow in cell and molecular pharmacology at UCSF. He joined the UCSF faculty as an assistant professor in 2017, and the UCSF-Gladstone Institute of Genomic Immunology in 2022.

Roybal harnesses the tools of synthetic and chemical biology to increase the therapeutic potential of engineered immune cells. Working at every step along the cascade of events that mediate the killing of cancer cells by therapeutic T cells (CAR-T cells), he seeks to optimize the initial sensing of cancer cells by CAR-T cells, as well as the efficacy and safety of the subsequent cancer cell elimination. He also studies the intercellular communication and collective cellular behaviors underlying the immune response.

He was awarded the 2018 Science Magazine and Sartorius Prize for Regenerative Medicine and Cell Therapy and received a New Innovator Award from National Institutes of Health in 2018.