Theodore Roth MD, PhD

Theo Roth, MD PhD, was born in St. Louis, Missouri and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, before completing his undergraduate degree in Biology with Honors at Stanford University, along with a coterminal Master’s degree in Biomedical Informatics.

He completed his MD/PhD training in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of California, San Francisco. During his PhD work at UCSF with Alex Marson, MD, PhD, he developed non-viral genome targeting, a new efficient method for large scale genetic engineering of diverse primary human immune cell types without the need for complex viral vectors. He further developed pooled knock-in screening, enabling rapid discovery of synthetic sequences to re-wire immune cell genomes and associate synthetic genotypes with high dimensional single cell phenotypes. Pooled screening of TCR and CAR T cell therapies has highlighted synthetic genetic perturbations with improved context dependent fitness profiles matched to specific solid tumor settings.

After concluding his PhD, Dr. Roth co-founded ArsenalBio, and served as Arsenal’s founding Chief Scientific Officer for a year before returning to UCSF to complete his MD. He is currently completing his residency in Clinical Pathology at Stanford University.