FASEB Excellence In Science

Anita Roberts, PhD, a much-loved colleague and member of the NCI Intramural Community for 30 years, died peacefully at home Friday, May 26, 2006. With the rest of the world, we have always admired her work. But watching her battle with gastric cancer, we came to admire equally her grace and strength.

—Robert Wiltrout, PhD, Director, CCR

nita Roberts was a friend and colleague, an exemplary and always supportive mentor, and an impeccable scientist with an uncanny ability to balance her professional and personal lives. As aptly stated by Glenn Merlino, PhD, her successor as chief of the Laboratory of Cell Regulation and Carcinogenesis (LCRC), “Dr. Roberts established a sort of scientific universe in her lab that met not only intellectual needs, but was almost a family. All of her people, from postdoctoral fellows to PIs, knew they could come to her for anything. It was a very nurturing and incredibly productive environment.”

Dr. Roberts came to the NCI in 1976 and served as chief of the LCRC from 1995 to 2004. In 2003, Science Watch listed her among the 50 most-cited scientists during 1982 to 2002. Her 344 publications and 36,397 citations made her the third most-cited female researcher in the world and one of five NCI scientists listed among the top 50.

A graduate of Oberlin College, Dr. Roberts earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin, was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School, and taught chemistry at Indiana University before coming to the NCI. Her work focused primarily on the cytokine, transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β). She collaborated for nearly 20 years with Michael Sporn, MD, formerly chief of NCI’s Laboratory of Chemoprevention. Together, they discovered and characterized TGF-β and established its role in autoimmune disease, fibrogenesis, carcinogenesis, and wound healing.

They found that TGF-β was among the proteins that control growth in epithelial and lymphoid cells, which are involved in most cancers. This cytokine normally sends a signal to the inside of the cell that tells it to stop growing. But the signal is mediated by Smads and, when altered, can cause cells to run wild—actually promoting carcinogenesis. Some of the newest therapeutics, such as the breast cancer drug trastuzumab and the tumor inhibitor bevacizumab, are based on the work of Drs. Roberts and Sporn. Their collaboration was recognized when they received the 2005 Susan G. Komen Foundation Brinker Award for Distinguished Science. Dr. Roberts’ more recent work focused on piecing together the Smad puzzle.

Dr. Roberts’ many other awards and honors include:

Additionally, she served on numerous editorial boards and was past president of the Wound Healing Society.

In March 2004, Dr. Roberts was diagnosed with aggressive stage IV gastric cancer. Suddenly, she was not only a cancer researcher; she was also a cancer patient. Faced with the emotional pain of a poor prognosis and the physical difficulties of chemotherapy, she lived her motto: “Take one day at a time and get the most out of it!” She made her disease more understandable to her grandchildren by creating a blog, which ultimately became a way for her to organize her thoughts and communicate her progress to family, friends, colleagues, and supporters everywhere. She found solace in and wrote about doing the things she loved: visiting her family; spending time with her husband, Bob, at their beach house in Bethany, Delaware; and gardening. “Happiness is having more dirt under your fingernails,” one blog entry reads. Despite the physical discomforts of the disease and the aggressive therapy, Dr. Roberts also continued her work. As Dr. Merlino put it, “For the last two years, Anita has had to live with the knowledge that her disease was likely fatal. Yet, her productivity did not diminish. She was in the lab nearly every day. She didn’t just go to big meetings and take part in them, she organized them. And she continued to take care of everybody in the lab, her science family.”

Dr. Roberts leaves behind her husband, Robert E. Roberts, two sons, five grandchildren, and a sister. She also leaves a strong legacy at the NCI and to the science of medicine: Her work has already inspired much ongoing research and new treatment options. Her colleagues have all been touched by her unique gifts, and the clarity of her vision remains. As she told Cancer Research (Spring 2006), “Research takes a long, long time.… As basic scientists, we’re all driven by our excitement in finding answers. We hope it ends up as something that becomes therapy. But that doesn’t happen unless you have a basic understanding of the process. And that’s what my work is all about.”