Faculty

Dr. Arai has formal training in clinical research with a Masters in Epidemiology from Stanford University. She has a clinical practice seeing all diseases in hematopoietic cell transplantation, with a clinical research focus on the prevention and treatment of post-transplant complications.

Dr. Bharadwaj is fellowship-trained in blood and marrow transplantation, cellular therapy, hematology, and oncology. She is an instructor in the Stanford School of Medicine Department of Medicine, Division of Blood & Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy. Dr. Bharadwaj focuses her expertise on diagnosing and treating cancer in blood and bone marrow. For each patient, she develops a personalized, comprehensive, and compassionate care plan. In her diverse experience as a physician and scientist, she has served as an internal medicine doctor, hospitalist, hematologist, oncologist, and blood and marrow transplantation specialist. Dr. Bharadwaj has a degree in clinical research and is currently conducting clinical trials in transplant and cellular therapy. She has participated in research studies of advances in therapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, melanoma, and breast cancer. She has co-authored articles published in Leukemia and Lymphoma and elsewhere. Topics include advances in cell transplantation. She also co-wrote the chapter on genome-driven personalized cancer therapy in the book Precision Medicine in Oncology. Dr. Bharadwaj has made presentations at meetings of the American Society of Hematology, American Society of Clinical Oncology, and other associations. Subjects include racial, demographic, and socioeconomic disparities in the treatment of patients with acute myeloid leukemia. Dr. Bharadwaj is a member of the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy, American Society of Hematology, and American Society of Clinical Oncology.

In perpetual awe of how 'simple' microbial organisms can perturb complex, multicellular eukaryotic organisms, Ami Bhatt has chosen to dedicate her research program to inspecting, characterizing and dissecting the microbe-human interface. Nowhere is the interaction between hosts and microbes more potentially impactful than in immunocompromised hosts and global settings where infectious and environmental exposures result in drastic and sometimes fatal health consequences. Ami's group identifies problems and questions that arise in the course of routine clinical care. Often in collaboration with investigators at Stanford and beyond, the group applies modern genetic, molecular and computational techniques to seek answers to these questions, better understand host-microbe interactions and decipher how perturbation of these interactions may result in human disease phenotypes.

Dr. Janice (Wes) Brown specializes in the treatment of infectious complications that occur in patients who are receiving cancer treatments or are undergoing transplantation of solid organs or hematopoietic cells. She has been a member of the Blood and Marrow Transplantation faculty for more than twenty years and co-founded the Immunocompromised Host Infectious Diseases consultation service. Dr. Brown’s special interest is to understand the nature of immunodeficiency resulting from an ever- evolving spectrum of targeted and immunomodulatory therapy. Her laboratory studies approaches to enhance and/or rebuild protective immunity. She is a leader in the design and execution of clinical trials of new treatments for infections that have significantly improved the outcomes of high-risk patients.

Dr. Dahiya is a cancer specialist with board certification in internal medicine, hematology, and medical oncology. He is an Associate Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine and Clinical Director of Cancer Cell Therapy in the Stanford BMT and Cell Therapy division. Dr. Dahiya strives to support each patient with a personalized and compassionate care plan that optimizes healing and quality of life. Prior to joining Stanford, Dr. Dahiya was an associate professor of medicine at the Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he developed the Cellular Immunotherapy Program and served as the Director of Cellular Immunotherapy in leukemia and lymphoma. Dr. Dahiya’s research focuses on cellular immunotherapy for hematologic malignancies. He has led and participated in several investigator-initiated studies and sponsored clinical trials with cell therapies (CAR-T, CAR-NK, TCR-T) for hematologic malignancies. His research group is also involved in various translational research activities for the standard of care and research CAR-T therapy. Dr. Dahiya’s group was the first group to show the role of fibrinogen in Neurotoxicity associated with CAR-T therapy. They showed vascular injury as manifested by high fibrinogen levels is associated with higher Neurotoxicity in patients who receive CAR-T therapy. More recently his group led a novel study of assessing the immune response to COVID-19 disease. They evaluated the immune response in critically ill and non-critically ill patients hospitalized with COVID-19 disease and showed a differential immune response between the groups. Dr. Dahiya’s group also showed and established poor immunogenicity of COVID-19 vaccines in CART recipients. As such, passive immunity and other strategies to address the issues of immunogenicity are being explored. He has published more than 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Blood, Blood Advances, Lancet, Leukemia Research, Neuro-Oncology, and many more. He reviews article submissions for the journals Critical Reviews in Oncology and Hematology, Thoracic Cancer, and Blood. He serves as the hematology lead editor for the journal Critical Reviews in Oncology and Hematology. He has presented his research findings at conferences such as the annual meetings of the American Society of Hematology, American Society of Clinical Oncology, and American Society for Transplantation and Cell Therapy. Dr. Dahiya is a member of the American Society of Hematology and the American Society of Transplantation and Cell Therapy.

Dr. Matthew Frank, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy at Stanford University. Dr. Frank predominantly cares for patients with high-risk lymphoma and other blood cancers. He is a lead investigator of clinical trials evaluating the safety and effectiveness of cancer treatments called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR ) T therapy for patients with lymphomas and leukemias. Dr. Frank’s research focuses on developing methods to identify patients who are at high risk for relapse or developing side-effects after receiving CAR T therapy and to understand why these relapses and side-effects occur.

Dr. Laura Johnston currently serves as the Clinical Director and Clinic Chief of the Blood & Marrow Transplantation Division and specializes in Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD), exploring prevention and treatment of acute and chronic GVHD via clinical trials. She conducts and develops clinical research trials in allogeneic and autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) for hematologic malignancies: acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), myeloproliferative disease, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), Hodgkin disease, myelodysplasia and aplastic anemia.

Dr. Lowsky has been an academic clinician and medical researcher in hematopoietic cell transplantation for 20 years and has broad experience and expertise in the field. He has designed, written, implemented and participated in single and multi-center federally-funded clinical trials; and has served on the Stanford IRB and SRC for cancer-oriented clinical trials for over 10 years.

Research focus in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and Treg cell immunotherapy, with an emphasis on the treatment of graft-versus-host disease as well as immune tolerance induction for transplantation and autoimmunity.

I am the Chief of Stanford BMT and Cell Therapy Program providing 600 cancer cell therapies annually. Our BMT-CT research group fosters the development of both laboratory immunologists, and clinical translational researchers. Our Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (alloHCT) research is optimizing graft content of CD34 HSC, conventional T lymphocyte, and regulatory T cell content in order to cures blood cancers via beneficial graft-v-tumor (GVT) immunity. Our overall research goal is to augment GVT while preventing detrimental graft versus host disease (GVHD). Our CAR-T research provide the most direct targeting of cancer and has dramatically helped patients with leukemia and Lymphoma already. The Miklos lab pioneered protein microarray technologies to discover clinically relevant allogeneic antibodies, especially those targeting H-Y antigens following sex mismatched transplantation. Our discovery that allogeneic HY antibodies develop in association with chronic GVHD revealed a critical B cell role in chronic GVHD pathogenesis and our clinical trials established cGVHD therapeutic benefits using anti-B cell drugs rituximab and ibrutinib. We developed high-throughput sequencing of the B and T cell immune receptor thereby enabling: 1) lymphoid disease quantification, 2) detailed B and T cell donor reconstitution kinetics, and 3) clonal analysis of antigen specific responses following allo-HCT. Immunotherapy is revolutionizing cancer treatment and Stanford Cancer Cell Therapy Program is developing and evaluating the most promising chimeric antigen T-cell (CAR-T) therapies. CAR-T genetically modifies the patient's T lymphocytes to target their cancer. Thus far, the most successful CAR-T have targeted B cell antigens CD19, CD20, CD22, and BCMA, and our ongoing trials are treating patients with relapsed/refractory leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma.

Dr. Muffly specializes in blood and marrow transplant and cellular therapies. Her interests include clinical research with a focus on improving outcomes in acute leukemia and blood and marrow transplantation.

Robert S. Negrin, MD is a Professor of Medicine and former Chief of the Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Stanford University from 2000-2020. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley and MD from Harvard University. He trained in medicine and hematology at Stanford University and joined the faculty in 1990. His research work has focused on cellular immunology in particular developing a more fundamental understanding of complex biological reactions such as graft versus host and graft vs tumor reactions in animal models and in the clinic. He has authored over 225 original papers, 40 book chapters and a book. He has received a number of awards including the Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award and is a member of the Association of American Physicians. He was previously the President of the International Society of Cellular Therapy and the American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. He served as an Associate Editor of the journal Blood and is the founding editor of Blood Advances.

Dr. Rezvani is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Blood & Marrow Transplantation and Cell Therapy. He serves as the medical director of the inpatient BMT/cell therapy units at Stanford University and as Associate Clinical Chief of the Division. As a clinician, he cares for people undergoing allogeneic and autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation and other forms of cellular therapy. His research interests include optimizing the use of alternative donors for people who lack traditional fully-matched donors; the prevention and treatment of graft-vs.-host disease; the role of the microbiome in hematopoietic cell transplantation; and quality-of-care and systems improvement. He also teaches and serves as a research mentor for trainees in the Division of Blood & Marrow Transplant at Stanford.

Maria Grazia Roncarolo, MD is the George D. Smith Professor in Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and of Medicine, director of the Center for Definitive and Curative Medicine, and co-director of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Roncarolo leads efforts to translate scientific discoveries in genetic diseases and regenerative medicine into novel patient therapies, including treatments based on stem cells and gene therapy. A pediatric immunologist by training, she earned her medical degree at the University of Turin, Italy. She spent her early career in Lyon, France, where she focused on severe inherited metabolic and immune diseases, including severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), better known as the "bubble boy disease." Dr. Roncarolo was a key member of the team that carried out the first stem cell transplants given before birth to treat these genetic diseases. While studying inherited immune diseases, Dr. Roncarolo discovered a new class of T cells. These cells, called T regulatory type 1 cells, help maintain immune system homeostasis by preventing autoimmune diseases and assisting the immune system in tolerating transplanted cells and organs. Dr. Roncarolo completed the first clinical trial using T regulatory type 1 cells to prevent severe graft-versus-host disease in leukemia patients receiving blood-forming stem-cell transplants from donors who were not genetic matches. Dr. Roncarolo worked for several years at DNAX Research Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology in Palo Alto, where she contributed to the discovery of novel cytokines, cell-signaling molecules that are part of the immune response. She studied the role of cytokines in inducing immunological tolerance and in promoting stem cell growth and differentiation. Dr. Roncarolo developed new gene-therapy approaches, which she pursued as director of the Telethon Institute for Cell and Gene Therapy at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan. She was the principal investigator leading the successful gene therapy trial for SCID patients who lack an enzyme critical to DNA synthesis, which is a severe life-threatening disorder. Based on the results of this trial, gene therapy for ADA-SCID has obtained Orphan drug status from both the FDA and EMEA and it was licensed to Glaxo Smith Klein, which has received European Commission approval to market under the name of Strimvelis. Under her direction, the San Raffaele Scientific Institute has been seminal in showing the efficacy of gene therapy for otherwise untreatable inherited metabolic diseases and primary immunodeficiencies. Dr. Roncarolo established the Stanford Center for Definitive and Curative Medicine to cure patients with currently incurable diseases through the development of innovative stem cell-and gene-based therapies.

I am a member of the Stanford Blood and Marrow Transplantation (BMT) faculty, the Stanford Immunology Program and the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. I have attended on the BMT clinical service since 1997, and I oversee a research laboratory. My current clinical efforts and basic research focus on improving the safety and efficacy of hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) which is the most widely practiced and powerful form of cellular therapy. To achieve this goal we address two fundamental issues of HCT – the preparation of the recipient to accept a transplanted hematopoietic graft, and the impact of the graft cellular content on the success of the therapy. We have applied our expertise to develop novel ways to achieve engraftment of blood forming stem cells with the goal to replace chemotherapy and radiation. We have also developed the tools and methods that will allow us to transplant grafts of pure blood forming stem cells with the goal to eliminate potentially harmful passenger cells contained in a blood stem cell graft.

Dr. Sidana is a hematologist/oncologist who is fellowship trained in advanced hematology with an emphasis on myeloma, amyloidosis, and dysproteinemia disorders. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation & Cellular Therapy, at Stanford University School of Medicine. She leads the Myeloma Cellular Immunotherapy program at Stanford. Her areas of expertise include transplantation and novel cellular immunotherapies such as CAR-T-cell therapy for patients with multiple myeloma. For each patient, Dr. Sidana develops a personalized care plan designed to optimize outcomes and quality of life. Dr. Sidana conducts extensive research. Currently, she is conducting clinical trials of CAR-T therapy and bispecific T-cell engagers for treatment of patients with myeloma. She is studying patients’ access to CAR-T cell therapy, the financial burden of the treatment, and its impact on patients’ quality of life and cognitive function. Dr Sidana has received a grant from the Stanford Medicine Cancer Institute and NIH funding through the Stanford KL2 program to study adverse events of CAR-T therapy on patients and monitoring of patients undergoing CAR-T therapy using wearable devices. In the past, Dr. Sidana received Conquer Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology for her research on the impact of clinical trial participation on patients with multiple myeloma and lymphoma. She has also received grants from the Amyloidosis Foundation and International Waldenstrom’s Macrogloulinemia Foundation to understand AL amyloidosis, a rare disease caused by buildup of an abnormal protein. Dr. Sidana has given presentations at regional and national conferences and her work has been published in high-impact journals. Dr. Sidana has been recognized for her work with many honors, including an Outstanding Hematology/Oncology Fellow award and Outstanding Research Fellow award from the Mayo Clinic. She is a member of the American Society of Hematology, American Society of Clinical Oncology, International Myeloma Society, International Society of Amyloidosis, and American Society of Transplantation & Cellular Therapy. Dr. Sidana is often an invited speaker at patient support groups as well as symposia and workshops for her peers.

Dr. Smith is a board-certified, fellowship-trained medical oncologist and hematologist. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Blood & Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy. She is a physician-scientist who conducts extensive research. She completed a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the Clinical Research Training (now, the Medical Research Scholars) Program and she was a post-doctoral researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Her research focuses on studies evaluating strategies whereby donor T cells can be administered to improve outcomes following blood and marrow transplant. Specifically, she studies novel treatment strategies using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy. Dr. Smith has been invited to present the findings of her research at regional, national, and international conferences. At the Insights in Hematology Conference, she focused on the use of CAR T cells for blood cancers, whereas she presented her investigations on the associations between CAR T cells and the intestinal microbiome at the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation. Further, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy, she addressed the importance of training scientists from underrepresented populations. Dr. Smith has co-authored articles on topics within the field of cancer immunology, including cancer immunotherapy, stem cell transplantation, and CAR T cell therapy. Her work has appeared in journals, including Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, Blood Advances, Leukemia, Nature, Nature Immunology, Nature Medicine, and elsewhere. She serves a peer reviewer for publications in various journals, such as Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, Haematologica, and ImmunoMedicine. She also has co-written chapters in books, including Pocket Oncology, Current Concepts and Controversies in Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, and Advanced Concepts in Human Immunology: Prospects for Disease Control. Dr. Smith has also earned numerous honors. The American Society of Hematology, Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation, and many other professional societies and organizations have recognized her achievements as a clinician, researcher, and scholar. She is a member of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Subcommittee on Immunotherapy and the co-chair of the Committee on Trainees and Junior Faculty for the American Society of Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT). Other positions in service to professional organizations include co-chairing committees and task forces dedicated to promoting diversity among hematology and cell therapy specialists.

Dr. Wen-Kai Weng specializes in the treatment of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), his basic research interest is immunotherapy for lymphoma and cancer, with two components: tumor specific targeting therapy and allogeneic transplant. He is currently working on new strategies to target patient-specific tumor using antibody along with effector cells. He is also conducting clinical study looking at the clinical efficacy of allogeneic transplant in patients with cutaneous lymphoma.

Crystal L Mackall MD is the Ernest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Stanford University, the Founding Director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy, Associate Director of the Stanford Cancer Institute, Leader of the Cancer Immunotherapy Program and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy @ Stanford. During a 27-year tenure at NCI culminating as Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch and Head of the Immunology Section and since 2016 at Stanford, she has led an internationally recognized translational research program focused on immune-oncology. Her work has advanced understanding of fundamental immunology and translated this understanding for the treatment of human disease with a major focus on children’s cancers. She has led numerous first-in-human and first-in-child clinical trials spanning dendritic cell vaccines, cytokines, and adoptive immunotherapy using NK cells and genetically modified T cells. Her work is credited with identifying an essential role for the thymus in human T cell regeneration (NEJM 1995) and discovering IL-7 as the master regulator of T cell homeostasis (Blood 2001, J Exp Med 2008). Her group was among the first to demonstrate impressive activity of CD19-CAR in pediatric leukemia (Lancet 2015), developed a CD22-CAR that is the only active salvage therapy for CAR19 resistant B cell malignancies (Nat Med 2018, J Clin Onc 2020, Blood 2021), demonstrated preclinical activity of GD2 targeting CARs for pediatric diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (Nat Med 2018), demonstrated superiority of regional CNS delivery of CAR T cells for brain tumors (Nat Med 2020) and demonstrated impressive clinical activity of GD2-CAR T cells in this disease (NCT04196413), which is among the first to demonstrate significant and consistent activity of CAR T cells in solid cancers (Nature 2022). Her group identified T cell exhaustion as a major feature CAR T cell potency (Nat Med 2015), created the first exhaustion-resistance (Nature 2019) and exhaustion-reversal platforms (Science 2021), developed a best-in-class regulatable “remote-controlled” CAR T cell platform (Cell, 2022) and discovered a role for mediator kinase in regulating T cell differentiation (Science 2022). She has received numerous awards, including election to the National Academy of Medicine, American Society of Clinical Investigation and American Academy of Physicians, and she is afellow of the AACR Academy. She received Smalley Award for outstanding contributions to cancer immunotherapy from the Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer, the AACR-St.Baldrick’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Pediatric Cancer Research, and the Nobility in Science Award from the Sarcoma Foundation of America. She has published over 250 manuscripts, her h-index in November 2022 according to google scholar is 96 and founded 3 biotech companies. Crystal is Board Certified in Pediatrics, Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and Internal Medicine.