School of Medicine
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Kathleen M. Sakamoto
Shelagh Galligan Professor in the School of Medicine
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research focuses on the molecular pathways that regulate normal and aberrant blood cell development, including acute leukemia and bone marrow failure syndromes. We are also studying novel drugs for treatment of cancer.
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Surbhi Sidana, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine (Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy)
BioDr. 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. -
James Swartz
James H. Clark Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Chemical Engineering and of Bioengineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProgram Overview
The world we enjoy, including the oxygen we breathe, has been beneficially created by biological systems. Consequently, we believe that innovative biotechnologies can also serve to help correct a natural world that non-natural technologies have pushed out of balance. We must work together to provide a sustainable world system capable of equitably improving the lives of over 10 billion people.
Toward that objective, our program focuses on human health as well as planet health. To address particularly difficult challenges, we seek to synergistically combine: 1) the design and evolution of complex protein-based nanoparticles and enzymatic systems with 2) innovative, uniquely capable cell-free production technologies.
To advance human health we focus on: a) achieving the 120 year-old dream of producing “magic bullets”; smart nanoparticles that deliver therapeutics or genetic therapies only to specific cells in our bodies; b) precisely designing and efficiently producing vaccines that mimic viruses to stimulate safe and protective immune responses; and c) providing a rapid point-of-care liquid biopsy that will count and harvest circulating tumor cells.
To address planet health we are pursuing biotechnologies to: a) inexpensively use atmospheric CO2 to produce commodity biochemicals as the basis for a new carbon negative chemical industry, and b) mitigate the intermittency challenges of photovoltaic and wind produced electricity by producing hydrogen either from biomass sugars or directly from sunlight.
More than 25 years ago, Professor Swartz began his pioneering work to develop cell-free biotechnologies. The new ability to precisely focus biological systems toward efficiently addressing new, “non-natural” objectives has proven tremendously useful as we seek to address the crucial and very difficult challenges listed above. Another critical feature of the program is the courage (or naivete) to approach important objectives that require the development and integration of several necessary-but- not-sufficient technology advances.