Dr. Belldegrun is Professor of Urology, holds the Roy and Carol Doumani Chair in Urologic Oncology, and Director of the UCLA Institute of Urologic Oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Belldegrun has been closely involved with the founding, development and sale of several private and public biopharmaceutical companies. In 1996, Dr. Belldegrun founded Agensys, Inc. and served as its founding Chairman of the board of directors. In December 2007, Agensys was acquired by Astellas Pharma, Inc., in a deal valued at $537 million. Dr. Belldegrun was also the founding vice-chairman of the board of directors and chairman of the scientific advisory board of Cougar Biotechnology, Inc. that was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2009 in a $970 million transaction. In April 2011, the United States Food Drug Administration approved Abiraterone Acetate (Zytiga^TM), Cougar’s lead product, for late stage prostate cancer.

Dr. Belldegrun completed his M.D. at the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, his post graduate fellowship at the Weizmann Institute of Science and his residency in Urological Surgery at Harvard Medical School. Prior to UCLA, Dr. Belldegrun was at the National Cancer Institute/NIH as a research fellow in surgical oncology and immunotherapy under Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg. He has authored more than 400 scientific and medical papers related to urological cancers, immunotherapy, gene therapy, and cancer vaccines. He is certified by the American Board of Urology, and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the American Association of Genitourinary Surgeons (AAGUS).