She has achieved international acclaim for her work in growth factor research, having discovered and characterized, together with Dr Sporn, the cytokine transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β).
Dr Roberts' research has established roles for this peptide in autoimmune disease, fibrogenesis, carcinogenesis, and wound healing which are leading to the development of new therapies for these diseases. From 1995 to 2004, Dr Roberts served as Chief of the Laboratory of Cell Regulation and Carcinogenesis at the National Cancer Institute. She was recently named the 49th most cited scientist, worldwide, for the period from 1982 to 2002 by the Institute for Scientific Information, making her the second most highly cited woman scientist. She was among the first group of NIH scientists elected to the Senior Biomedical Research Service and was a past president of the Wound Healing Society. In this past year, she has been the recipient of the FASEB award for Excellence in Science, the Leopold Griffuel Prize, awarded by the French Association for Cancer, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr Roberts has authored over 330 articles and serves on numerous scientific advisory and editorial boards. Throughout her career, Dr Roberts has placed a high value on mentoring and on the need for a balance between family life and science. She has two sons and five grandchildren which bring her great joy. Her present research interests are focused on identification of the roles of specific downstream signaling pathways of TGF-β in disease pathogenesis including fibrogenesis and carcinogenesis and on the possibility of applying this knowledge to the design of novel, possibly more selective therapies. Dr Roberts obtained her PhD from the University of Wisconsin for the study of the metabolism of retinoic acid with Dr Hector De Luca followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University Medical School. In 1976, she joined the National Cancer Institute as a postdoctoral fellow in Michael Sporn's Laboratory. She holds several patents on TGF-β including patents focused on the specific role of the TGF-β signaling intermediate, Smad3, in wound healing and fibrosis, including fibrogenic processes intiated by injury which involve pathogenic transition of epithelial cells to mesenchyme.
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