Dr. Ofrat Beyar-Katz is director of the Cellular Immunotherapy Unit, in the Institute of Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplantation, an associate member of the Clinical Research Institute at Rambam (CRIR), and the principal investigator of the hospital’s Center for Cellular Immunotherapy.
She received her M.D. (2010) and Ph.D. (2018) from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. Remaining in Haifa, she completed her internal medicine residency at Bnai-Zion Medical Center, followed by a hematology fellowship at Rambam Health Care Campus (2017). Shen then completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), in Philadelphia, USA (2020).
In 2020, Dr. Beyar-Katz was appointed Head of the Immunotherapy and CAR-T laboratory at Tel Aviv Medical center. She joined Rambam Health Care Campus in 2022.
Dr. Ofrat Beyar-Katz has over 35 publications in peer-review journals, is the recipient of several competitive grants, and is well-known presenter at international professional meetings.
With a background in cellular immunotherapy, particularly focusing on CAR-T cell therapy for hematological malignancies, Dr. Beyar-Katz’s career trajectory is aimed at developing novel CAR-T products. During her Ph.D. research she began exploring the immune microenvironment in cancer. This inspired her to pursue post-doctoral training at UPenn, where she broadened her knowledge and research experience in CAR-T immunotherapy.
The Center for Cellular Immunotherapy laboratory is focusing on several projects including:
- Development of innovative CAR-T cell drugs capable of detecting two antigens on the tumor cell surface (instead of one)
- Boosting CAR-T cell activity by enhancing the expression and secretion of various T-cell cytokines
- Applying gene-editing CRISPR to insert, delete, or replace specific genes