With over 180 attendees and over $145,000 in donations, the Forward Lymphoma event with Coach Bob Knight was a huge success. To view photos from the event, click here.
Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
Member of the University of Wisconsin Paul P. Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center
Dr. Hematti's basic laboratory research focuses on the biology of bone marrow stem cells, both hematopoietic (HSCs) and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), and his major clinical interest is in bone marrow transplantation (BMT). Dr. Hematti likes to call himself a translational researcher as his ultimate goal is to improve the outcome of BMT and making it available to a wider range of patients with hematological malignancies utilizing the knowledge gained through his laboratory research. For example, before moving to UW and while he was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Cynthia Dunbar at National Institutes of Health, he investigated the potential of AMD3100, a novel HSC mobilization agent working through breaking the interaction between HSCs and MSCs, for mobilization of HSCs in a pre-clinical rhesus macaque model. After joining UW this background led him to initiate a phase-III trial using this agent for patients with who have failed other mobilization regimens and thus could not proceed with their planned autologous transplantation, their last hope for cure.
In the last couple of years this study has allowed more than 20 patients with lymphoma or multiple myeloma to be collected successfully and proceed with their transplantation, something that could have been impossible without having this trial open.
Another area of interest for Dr. Hematti is the role of bone marrow MSCs in normal and malignant hematopoiesis. Again, this basic research interest combined with the goal of improving the outcomes after BMT led him to open a phase-III trial to study the effect of MSCs in treating acute graft versus host disease, a potentially deadly complication after allogeneic BMT. Most recently, Dr. Hematti is studying the role of MSCs in B-cell malignancies including lymphoma and multiple myeloma through funding provided by Skoronski fund for lymphoma research and Trillium fund for multiple myeloma research.
Dr. Hematti grew up in Iran and received his medical degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences. He continued his medical training at Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, followed by specialty training at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Currently, he lives with his family in Middleton. His wife, Shirin (which means sweet in Persian) teaches mathematics at University of Wisconsin, and their daughters (Neeloufar- which means morning glory-, and Faranak- which means butterfly) attend Madison Day Country School.
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