Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD Director of the PICI Center at UCLA Biography Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine, surgery, and molecular and medical pharmacology at The University of California, Los Angeles; the Director of the Tumor Immunology Program at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center; and the Director of The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy Center at UCLA. His research is focused on laboratory and clinical studies to address primary and acquired resistance to immunotherapy and targeted therapies for melanoma and on the development of gene-engineered adoptive T cell transfer therapies for cancer. He has been instrumental in the clinical development of several agents approved by the US FDA, including the first anti–PD-1 pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and two combinations of BRAF and MEK inhibitors, vemurafenib (Zelboraf) and cobimetinib (Cotellic) and dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist), and he helped develop the first CD19 CAR for lymphoma, axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta). Dr. Ribas was previously President of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). He is an elected Fellow of the AACR Academy, the Royal Academy of Medicine of Catalonia, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the National Academy of Medicine. Education & Training 2001: Hematology/Oncology Fellowship, UCLA School of Medicine 1998: Surgical Oncology Fellowship, UCLA School of Medicine 1990: Universidad de Barcelona, MD Awards & Honors 2013: Outstanding Research Award, Society for Melanoma Research; Physician of the Year, Melanoma International Foundation 2009: Elected member, American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) 2005: Melanoma Research Foundation Junior Researcher Award 2001: Hematology/Oncology Fellowship, UCLA School of Medicine 2000: American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Clinical Research Career Development Award; Amgen Oncology Fellow Award, UCLA; Fellow Teaching Award, UCLA 1998: Surgical Oncology Fellowship, UCLA School of Medicine 1997: Extraordinary Prize and Suma Cum Laude, Doctoral Thesis, Autonomous University of Barcelona