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Ghobadi Appointed Director of Cellular Therapies at Siteman

By Siteman Communications |
Armin Ghobadi, MD

Armin Ghobadi, MD, a WashU Medicine professor of medicine and bone marrow transplant specialist, has been named director of cellular therapies at Siteman Cancer Center, based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine.

The new position formalizes his role as leader of clinical care and clinical research activities related to cellular therapy in the Hematologic Malignancies program at WashU Medicine.

Cellular therapies — which include chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy and other gene and non-gene modified cellular therapies — supercharge a patient’s own immune cells or donor immune cells to fight disease. Siteman and WashU Medicine were among the first in the nation to offer CAR-T therapy — in clinical trials, initially, which Ghobadi helped lead, and as a standard of care when the therapy first received FDA approval in 2017.

As director of cellular therapies at Siteman, Ghobadi will:

  • Oversee clinical guidelines and protocols for patients receiving such treatments
  • Review quality assurance and quality improvement metrics for the cellular therapy program
  • Support clinical trials and translational research

“Dr. Ghobadi has played a pivotal role in the development of our outstanding CAR-T and cellular therapy program over the past 10 years, and we look forward to his continued stewardship of the program,” WashU Medicine physicians Daniel Link, MD, and Amanda Cashen, MD, said in a joint statement.

Link is the Alan and Edith Wolff Endowed Professor and chief of Oncology at WashU Medicine and deputy director of Siteman. Cashen is a professor of medicine and associate chief of the Hematologic Malignancies program.

A physician and clinical-translational researcher committed to developing and providing leading-edge care, Ghobadi specializes in the treatment of leukemia and lymphoma. He is board-certified in medical oncology.

“It is an honor to be appointed director of cellular therapies,” he said. “The new role strengthens our center’s cellular therapy enterprise in delivering and advancing some of the most promising therapies — and its creation reinforces WashU Medicine and Siteman Cancer Center’s commitment to patients today and tomorrow.”

Ghobadi’s other administrative roles include being clinical director of the Center for Gene and Cellular Immunotherapy at WashU Medicine and Siteman, which is internationally recognized for developing and offering some of the most innovative gene and cellular immunotherapies for hematologic malignancies and solid tumors.

Ghobadi earned his medical degree from Iran University of Medical Sciences and Health Services School of Medicine in 2001. He continued his training as an internal medicine intern and resident at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and as a fellow at both WashU Medicine and MD Anderson Cancer Center. In 2013, he joined the WashU Medicine faculty and began treating patients at Siteman.

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