Our Team
Principle Investigator
Dr. Amanda Kirane
Dr. Kirane is an assistant professor in the Department of Surgery, Section of Surgical Oncology, at Stanford University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on immune response and novel therapies in melanoma, and she has been the principal investigator of multiple translational and clinical studies with focus on mechanisms of innate immune targeting in melanoma. She has received funding from prestigious organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Dr. Kirane has published articles in prominent journals including the Journal of Dermatological Treatment, Journal of Surgical Oncology, Journal of Surgical Research, and Annals of Surgery. She has presented updates on melanoma management at conferences organized by the American College of Surgeons, Society of Surgical Oncology, and Society for Immunotherapy in Cancer. Dr. Kirane is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the Society of Surgical Oncology. She is a member of several professional organizations, including the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, American Association of Cancer Research, Society for Melanoma Research, Connective Tissue Oncology Society, Association of Academic Surgeons, and Association of Women Surgeons. In addition to her medical work, Dr. Kirane volunteers her time and expertise for various causes, including the Melanoma Research Foundation and STEM programs for children. She is also a certified Pilates instructor, Physician Wellness and Wellbeing Coach, and meditation teacher.
Research Staff
Dr. Usman Ahmad
Dr. Ahmad is currently a postdoctoral research fellow under the mentorship of Prof. George Poultsides in the Section of Surgical Oncology at Stanford University. In addition, he engages in basic scientific inquiry in tumor immunology under Prof. Amanda Kirane. As part of an interdisciplinary team, Dr. Ahmad is currently investigating the role of the intratumor microbiome and response to treatment for patients with pancreatic cancer funded by the Stanford Cancer Institute (SCI) and Sarafan ChEM-H. He entered his current position after completing 2 years of general surgical training at Stanford University and the University of Colorado.
Dr. Ahmad received his medical education at the University of South Florida (USF) where he was the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards including the Galen Scholarship, SELECT Koch Award, Anderson SELECT Scholarship, and Osler Award. During medical school, Dr. Ahmad was productive in both basic science and research resulting in 3 peer-reviewed publications and induction into the Robert A. Good Honor Society bestowed upon the top 10% of medical students in research. Dr. Ahmad also received the Alpha Omega Alpha Carolyn A. Kuckein Fellowship to continue policy work on improving the organ supply for Americans requiring organ transplants. Early in medical school, he conducted basic scientific work transplanting immune cells on metastatic melanoma in a mouse model while a visiting researcher under Prof. Gavin Pettigrew & Prof. Reza Mottalebzadeh in the Department of Surgery at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Dr. Ahmad was also active in health policy work culminating in a role as Vice Chair of the Medical Student Section Committee of Legislation & Advocacy for the American Medical Association with several roles at university, county, and state levels in both Florida and Pennsylvania. Dr. Ahmad has an extensive record of volunteer activity serving at risk populations in the United States during medical school including HIV, LGBTQ, pediatric, and homeless populations. In addition, he spends time mentoring and reviewing scholarship applications for Greenhouse Scholars, program focused on developing under-resourced high performing American students from high school to first career and beyond.
Prior to medical school, Dr. Ahmad had a career in the life sciences industry after receiving a degree in Economics from Northwestern University where he primarily focused on bringing new medical technology to market. Dr. Ahmad was part of a team selected by the Chicago Chamber of Commerce as the most innovative company in 2010 winning a state-wide competition. He also volunteered his time as a board member re-vitalizing a 25 year old arts organization in Chicago and helping to develop a business incubator in Detroit shortly after the Great Recession.
Dr. Ahmad is a native Chicagoan hailing from a large family raised near the Southside of Chicago. In his free time he enjoys cooking, reading, history, traveling, working on cars, and developing his interest in aviation.
Sherry Hsiu-Ju Hsu
Sherry Hsu is a life science technician in the Kirane Lab. She received her BSc and MSc degrees in the Department of Animal Science and Technology at National Taiwan University, where she specialized in reproductive biology with a focus on reproductive endocrinology. Prior to joining Stanford, she worked as an embryologist in Taiwan, where she applied assisted reproductive technologies to help patients facing infertility challenges. Sherry has enthusiastically joined the Kirane Lab with a strong interest in immunology and immunotherapy, and she is involved in the research on immunotherapy in melanoma.
Dave Lee
Dave Lee is a medical student who completed three years at Loma Linda University School of Medicine and is working at the Kirane Lab this year as a life science technician. He began his endeavor in cancer research under the mentorship of Professor John Kuriyan at the University of California, Berkeley. There he studied the molecular mechanisms and dynamics of KRas, a commonly implicated oncogenic protein, through a combination of saturation mutagenesis with an inducible bacterial two-hybrid assay. With his work, he won the Kazuo Gerald Yanaba & Ting Jung Memorial Prize by demonstrating epistatic coupling between two distinct regions of KRas: switch II and helix 5. This partially explained why not all “gain of function” mutations resulted in a constitutively active cancer product. Through medical school, he has engaged in research topics including E6 inhibition to prevent HPV squamous cell carcinoma and the optimal management of blunt abdominal trauma. His research interests lie in understanding the multiple pathways that lead to cancer and finding creative ways to target key molecular players in said pathways. Outside of lab, Dave is interested in helping to serve patients at the community and statewide level respectively, with his roles as a Street Medicine Site Leader and as a member of the California Medical Association Medical Student Executive Board.
Dr. Mamatha Serasanambati
Dr. Serasanambati hails from India and obtained a Ph.D. in her home country. Her research interests encompass various areas, such as cancer biology, genetic disorders, and translational medicine. Presently, she is engaged in investigating the AXL pathway within melanoma and immune cells, specifically in relation to treatment and disease progression. Furthermore, she is placing emphasis on utilizing organoids for Personalized Immunotherapy in Melanoma. This involves characterizing the molecular and genetic profile of the organoids, assessing the efficacy of immunotherapies like checkpoint inhibitors on the organoids in vitro, and identifying biomarkers linked to organoid responses to immunotherapy. In Dr. Serasanambati’s leisure time, she enjoys music, cooking, and spending quality time with her family.
Dr. Saurabh Sharma
Dr. Sharma’s current endeavor is focused on addressing the critical need for effective therapies in CNS metastases of melanoma, an area in which modern systemic therapy has made minimal progress with patients continuing to show extremely poor outcomes in checkpoint refractory disease. Dr. Sharma has shown an aptitude for meticulous drug development and has rapidly developed important skills in the unique modeling of the metastatic tumor environment. Recently, Saurabh's application was accepted to the SITC Sparkathon-2023 in prestigious program for promising early investigators to develop high priority immunotherapy projects under direct mentorship of society leaders for development of brain nano targeted immunotherapy. Recently he has applied for the 2023 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Bristol Myers Cancer Immunotherapy Translational Fellowship Award. Prior to joining the Prof. Amanda R. Kirane (Director of cutaneous melanoma surgery) at Surgery Department, Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford university, Dr. Sharma got the opportunity to work on novel immuno-nanoconjugates for brain cancer (Glioblastoma) as a Postdoctoral Chemist and Pharmacologist under the mentorship of Prof. Ali Khademhosseini (Biomaterial, Tissue Engineering Pioneer, EX-MIT and EX-UCLA Professor and Current CEO, Terasaki Institute) and Prof. Eggehard Holler (EX-Director of Nanomedicine, Cedar Sinai Medical Research Center, Los Angeles, California) at Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation, Los Angeles, California, USA. He worked as an assistant Professor at Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Health Sciences, UPES Dehradun, India. He pursued his Ph.D (Doctoral Degree) from BITS-Pilani, Pilani Campus, Rajasthan, India. During the PhD research work, Dr. Sharma has designed & developed the novel drug delivery systems for the delivery of the genetic materials (e.g., miRNA, siRNA) and chemotherapeutic agents. The research has a significant contribution in the field of developing novel treatment strategies for cancer therapy. He has experienced significant success in his early career, prior to joining post-doctoral program, as evidenced by his guest Speaker in VIT, Parul University and International Virtual Conference on Recent Trends in Life Sciences. He received a Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR-SRF) Senior Research Fellowship Award and several presentation awards at various International conferences. Further in detail, Dr. Sharma has shown significant success and contribution in his field as evident by: Dr Sharma holds two granted patents one US patent, PCT and other Indian patent in the field of developing novel drug delivery systems. Dr. Sharma published more than 24 publications (Since 2018, Citations:218, h-Index:10, I10-Index:10) his work at Internationally reputed high-Impact factor journal which included: Advance Science, Small, Lab On a Chip, Acta Biomaterialia, Biomaterials Advances (Materials Science and Engineering: C), Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine, Regenerative Biomaterials, Applied Surface Science, Molecular pharmaceutics, International Journal of Pharmaceutics etc several others.
Administrative Staff
Kathleen Sochan
Kathleen Sochan is an Administrative Associate in the Division of General Surgery in the Department of Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. Kathleen supports Drs. Amanda R. Kirane, Daniel J. Delitto and Frederick M. Dirbas.
Kathleen started with Stanford University in 2003 at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital supporting the board of directors. In 2013, Kathleen transferred to the Department of Surgery in the School of Medicine to support the Chair of Surgery, Thomas M. Krummel, MD, Emile Holman Professor & Chair Emeritus. From 2015 to 2021, she worked at Stanford Biodesign. In October 2021, Kathleen returned to the Department of Surgery and in May 2023, she transferred to the Division of General Surgery.