Bob Valamehr

President & Chief Executive Officer, Fate Therapeutics, Inc.

Search every verified Bob Valamehr interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Bob Valamehr, President and Chief Executive Officer at Fate Therapeutics, has presented on the company's work in developing induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cell therapies for cancer immunotherapy. In a 2018 presentation at the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy's 21st Annual Meeting, he discussed the potential of iPSC-derived natural killer (NK) cells as an off-the-shelf approach, noting that these cells may have longer telomere lengths and increased killing capacity compared to primary-derived cells. He also described Fate Therapeutics' pipeline, including non-engineered NK cells for combination with checkpoint inhibitors and engineered cells designed to improve tumor targeting and persistence. In a 2016 presentation at the ISSCR Annual Meeting, Valamehr discussed iPSCs as a platform for large-scale expansion of engineered hematopoietic cells. He stated that iPSCs could serve as a renewable, single-cell engineered source for off-the-shelf immunotherapies, potentially reducing the need for patient-specific manufacturing through HLA-matched banks. He also described challenges in gene editing, emphasizing that single-site targeted insertion is preferable to random multi-site integration for maintaining gene expression and avoiding promoter silencing.