Levi Gray-Rupp, Ph.D. has joined AstraZeneca as Global Product Leader, Solid Tumor Cell Therapy, effective September 2026, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He brings more than a decade of experience leading CAR-T discovery and early development programs, including taking a solid tumor CAR-T therapy from concept into the clinic.
Gray-Rupp said he’s looking forward to helping the team “progress our bold vision for cell therapy’s next decade.”
About Levi Gray-Rupp
Gray-Rupp joins AstraZeneca from ArsenalBio, where he spent nearly five years, most recently as Senior Director, AB-2100 Program Lead and Head of Immunology. He led AB-2100, a solid tumor autologous CAR-T program, from conception through first-in-human Phase 1 dose escalation in under four years. That work included target and indication selection, IND-enabling studies, first-pass IND clearance and Fast Track Designation. He also led ArsenalBio’s Immunology function, a team of about 20 scientists and research associates. Earlier in 2026, he co-founded The Criterion Institute.
Before ArsenalBio, Gray-Rupp was Associate Director, CAR-T/iPSC at Janssen, the pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson. There he led discovery teams on multiple autologous CAR-T projects and developed an iPSC-based allogeneic cell therapy platform. He began his industry career at Cell Design Labs, which was acquired by Kite Pharma, where he rose to Principal Scientist and led research on multiple CAR-T programs, including a small molecule-controlled “switch CAR” platform.
Gray-Rupp was an HHMI Postdoctoral Research Associate at UCSF in the lab of Wendell Lim, Ph.D., where he studied how to engineer cell fate and function through synthetic and systems biology. He earned his Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania and his B.Sc. in Chemistry and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
About AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca is a global, science-led biopharmaceutical company whose medicines are used by millions of patients around the world. Its therapy areas span Oncology, BioPharmaceuticals, Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism, Respiratory & Immunology, Infectious Disease and Rare Disease. The company has 183 projects in its pipeline, including a growing focus on cell therapies. Its major sites include Cambridge, UK; Gothenburg, Sweden; and Gaithersburg, Maryland.
