Anita Roberts
| Anita B. Roberts | |
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| Born |
April 3, 1942 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Died | May 26, 2006 (aged 64) Bethesda, Maryland |
| Other names | Anita Bauer Roberts |
| Nationality | United States |
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| Known for | TGF-β |
Anita B. Roberts (April 3, 1942 – May 26, 2006) was a molecular biologist who made pioneering observations of a protein, TGF-β, that is critical in healing wounds and bone fractures and that has a dual role in blocking or stimulating cancers.
Roberts was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she grew up. In 1964, she graduated with her bachelor's degree in Chemistry at Oberlin College. She earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1968, working under Hector DeLuca on retinoid metabolism. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, a staff chemist at Aerospace Research Applications Center, and an instructor in chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington. Roberts joined the National Cancer Institute in 1976. From 1995 to 2004, she served as Chief of the institute's Laboratory of Cell Regulation and Carcinogenesis, and continued her research there until her death in 2006.
In the early-1980s, Dr. Roberts and her colleagues at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland began to experiment with the protein transforming growth factor beta, commonly referred to as TGF-β.
Dr. Roberts isolated the protein from bovine kidney tissue and compared her results with TGF-β taken from human blood platelets and placental tissue. Institute researchers then began a series of experiments to determine the protein's characteristics. They discovered that it helps play a central role in signaling other growth factors in the body to heal wounds and fractures speedily.
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