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EmailOmar Khan, MD, PhD, is a genomic immunology fellow at the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology. He is also an assistant adjunct professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine at UC San Francisco (UCSF) and associate medical director of the UCSF Investigational Cell Therapy Program.
Khan’s lab defines and engineers novel immunobiology through synthetic immunology—uniting genome-scale editing, epigenetic reprogramming, and synthetic protein design to decode and rewire immune-cell circuits for next-generation therapies. His work integrates gold-standard in vivo models with advanced synthetic biology and protein-engineering approaches to develop systems that precisely program immune-cell function, with a focus on improving the potency, durability, and specificity of engineered cellular therapeutics.
He received his MD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his doctoral training in the laboratory of John Wherry, PhD, defining transcriptional and epigenetic programs underlying T-cell exhaustion. He subsequently completed residency training in clinical pathology and a fellowship in cellular therapy and transfusion medicine at UCSF. Prior to his faculty appointment, he served as director of immunology at ArsenalBio, where he led synthetic immunology efforts to develop CRISPR-engineered CAR-T therapies for solid tumors.
Khan is a member of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and the UCSF Center for Research in Transfusion Medicine and Cell Therapies. He is committed to advancing programmable immune-cell therapies that merge mechanistic immunology with cutting-edge synthetic biology to create transformative treatments for patients.