Dr. Natasha Kekre has been appointed to the Department of Medicine in the Division of Hematology, within the Transplant and Cellular Therapy Program at The Ottawa Hospital, effective October 2015. She is also an associate scientist within the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa. She completed her Bachelor’s in Science at the University of Windsor then obtained her medical degree from the University of Ottawa. She then trained at the University of Ottawa in Internal Medicine and Hematology. She went on to do a fellowship in stem cell transplantation at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA with a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University.
Her research is focused on developing early phase clinical trials and moving home grown therapeutic strategies into patients. She collaborates with a number of local investigators and scientists in Ottawa, studying hematologic malignancies and blood and marrow transplant recipients more specifically. She collaborates with scientists and physicians across Canada to build a Canadian CAR-T cell platform (chimeric antigen receptor T cells are immune cells engineered to kill cancer cells), bringing this exciting therapy to Canadian patients. Her other clinical research interests include improving transplant and CAR-T related outcomes, learning from current and future transplant and CAR-T treatment platforms.
She also participates with a number of cooperative groups in North America including the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research and Cell Therapy Transplant Canada. She has built worldwide collaborations with scientists, physicians and regulators to improve access and innovation in the CAR-T and immune therapy space globally.
Tan XXS, Maltez MT, Mallick R, Hamelin L, McDiarmid S, Cieniak C, Granger M, Bredeson C, Kennah M, Atkins HL, Kekre N. Distance to CAR-T Treatment Center Does Not Impede Delivery. Eur J Haematol. 2025 Feb;114(2):276-284.
Urbano-Ispizua Á, Shah NN, Kekre N. Point-of-care CAR T manufacturing solutions: can 1 model fit all? Blood Adv. 2024 Dec 10;8(23):6133-6136.
Thavorn K, Thompson E, Kumar S, Heiskanen A, Agarwal A, Atkins H, Shorr R, Hawrysh T, Chan KKW, Presseau J, Ollendorf DA, Graham ID, Grimshaw JM, Lalu MM, Nochaiwong S, Fergusson D, Hutton B, Coyle D, Kekre N. Economic Evaluations of CAR-T Cell Therapies for Hematologic and Solid Malignancies: A Systematic Review. Value Health. 2024 Apr 17:S1098-3015(24)02336-2.
Kekre N, Hay KA, Webb JR, Mallick R, Balasundaram M, Sigrist MK, Clement AM, Nielsen JS, Quizi J, Yung E, Brown SD, Dreolini L, Waller DD, Smazynski J, Gierc NS, Loveless BC, Clark K, Dyer T, Hogg R, McCormick L, Gignac M, Bell S, Chapman DM, Bond D, Yong S, Fung R, Lockyer HM, Hodgson V, Murphy C, Subramanian A, Wiebe E, Yoganathan P, Medynski L, Vaillan DC, Black A, McDiarmid S, Kennah M, Hamelin L, Song K, Narayanan S, Rodrigo JA, Dupont S, Hawrysh T, Presseau J, Thavorn K, Lalu MM, Fergusson DA, Bell JC, Atkins H, Nelson BH, Holt RA. CLIC-01: Manufacture and distribution of non-cryopreserved CAR-T cells for patients with CD19 positive hematologic malignancies. Front Immunol. 2022 Dec 19;13:1074740.
Cipkar C, Kumar S, Thavorn K, and Kekre N. The optimal timing of allogeneic stem cell transplantation for primary myelofibrosis. Transplant Cell Ther. 2022 Apr;28(4):189-194.
