Ruyan Rahnama

Ruyan Rahnama is an Instructor in Pediatric Oncology at the University of California San Francisco, with a clinical and research focus on childhood leukemia and engineered cell therapies using natural killer (NK) cells. She earned her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Medicine (2024) from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, completed a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology (2022), residency in General Pediatrics (2019), MD in Medicine (2016) from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, MSc in Global Health (2012) from UCSF, and BA in Molecular and Cell Biology (2010) from UC Berkeley.

• PhD: Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (2024)
• MD: Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (2016)
• MSc: Global Health, University of California, San Francisco (2012)
• BA: Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley (2010)

Her research spans pediatric hematologic malignancies, CAR-NK cell engineering, and immunotherapy optimization. Early work explored mesenchymal stem cell cytotoxicity and gene expression in cartilage, while recent studies focus on CAR-NK/T cell design for AML, SARS-CoV-2, and pediatric cancers. She has contributed to understanding systemic toxicities in engineered CAR-NK cells and metabolic factors in osteosarcoma metastasis.

• Third Year Fellowship Award, St. Baldrick's Foundation (2024)
• Fellowship Award, St. Baldrick's Foundation (2022)

Her publications highlight trends in cell therapy design, cancer immunology, and cross-disciplinary applications of CAR-NK cells in viral infections and pediatric oncology. She has collaborated extensively with researchers like Bonifant CL and Christodoulou I on NK cell engineering and clinical translation of immunotherapies.