UCSF Fresno Director of Hematology is the Principal Investigator
Haifaa Abdulhaq, MD, a UCSF clinical professor and director of Hematology at the UCSF School of Medicine regional campus at Fresno (UCSF Fresno), has spent considerable time building a program for delivering and manufacturing cellular and gene therapy in the San Joaquin Valley.
Her commitment and perseverance, along with those of a team at Community Health System and guidance from UCSF School of Medicine and UC Davis cellular therapy experts, resulted in the award of a $9 million grant this November from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).
The funds will establish a Community Care Center of Excellence (CCCE) for gene and cellular therapy on the campus of Clovis Community Medical Center. It will be one of only three community-based hubs for gene and cellular therapies to receive funding from CIRM, a state agency established by the people of California to accelerate stem cell, regenerative medicine, and gene therapy research.
The CCCE grant will transform patient care in the Valley.
“It will be lifesaving to so many patients,” Abdulhaq said. “We will bring the most advanced therapies for them in cellular and gene therapies for many disorders, and it will be done here close to home.”
The lab will be for processing, as well as delivering and manufacturing cellular and gene therapy for blood cancers, as well as for benign disorders, such as sickle cell disease; neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s; and autoimmune disorders, such as multiple sclerosis, said Abdulhaq, director of the Community Medical Centers Cellular Therapy Program at the Community Cancer Institute (CCI).
The need to send cancer patients to the Bay Area or Southern California for advanced treatments motivated Abdulhaq, an Inspire Medical Group hematologist and oncologist, to lead the initiative for the CCCE. About two-thirds of the patients she must refer for highly specialized care never receive it because of the long-distance barrier, she said.
Abdulhaq laid the groundwork for building a program for stem cell and cellular therapy in 2019. She first began discussions with Community about bringing CAR T (chimeric antigen receptor T cell) therapy to the Valley. CAR T-therapy is a revolutionary immunotherapy for certain types of leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma, in which the patient’s immune T lymphocytes (white blood cells) are genetically adapted to identify, target, and kill cancer cells. This year, in May, Abdulhaq’s first CAR T-cell patient received an infusion and is doing well. A second patient is also doing well, and a third will have an infusion in December.
Starting a CAR T-therapy program in the Valley involved collaboration with Community, the primary clinical partner for UCSF Fresno, but also assistance from Thomas G. Martin, MD, the associate chief of hematology/oncology and director of hematology, transplant, and cell therapy at UCSF School of Medicine. UCSF shared standard procedures, which accelerated the process for UCSF Fresno and Community to start the CAR T-program.
The $ 9 million CCCE grant could not have happened without the collaborative work done by Community, UCSF Fresno, and UCSF to first bring CAR T-therapy to the Valley, Abdulhaq said. “That is what set us up for success to be competitive and to get this grant.”
Abdulhaq possesses the expertise to develop programs for cellular therapy and gene therapy. She is board-certified in hematology and oncology and has a background in Stem Cell transplantation.
In opting to fund CCCE, CIRM recognized that large geographic areas of the state do not have CIRM-funded Alpha Clinics, where patients have access to the latest clinical trials, she said. The network of clinics is located at Stanford, UCSF, and UC Davis to the north, and at City of Hope, UCLA, USC-CHLA, Cedars-Sinai, UC Irvine, and UC San Diego to the south.
Approval of the application in November 2025 was a team effort, she said. Partnerships with Community, UCSF, and UC Davis were crucial to the success. “We worked really hard, all together on this, and we had a lot of support from everybody to put it all together.”
Building a cellular therapy laboratory will be a critical pillar of this program. UCSF Fresno and Community have been utilizing a lab facility in Arizona for the manufacturing of CAR T-cells for patients. For guidance on a cellular therapy laboratory in Clovis, Abdulhaq contacted Mehrdad Abedi, MD, an associate professor of Medicine at UC Davis, and director of the Alpha clinic at UC Davis. He connected her with the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) facility at UC Davis. “Manufacturing cellular therapy is something that very few institutions do, and the facility at UC Davis is one of the few well established GMP facilities in California,” Abdulhaq said.
After months of work, including late-night and weekend phone calls, Community determined the best option was to build a lab facility in a 2,000-square-foot space on the Clovis Community Medical Center campus.
Community’s involvement was extensive throughout the grant-writing process. “They helped me with the budgeting part, the financial aspect, and the community outreach aspects. I worked on more of the scientific part of the proposal,” Abdulhaq said, including the CCCE’s interaction with the Alpha Clinics at UCSF and UC Davis. “This is really a program that reaches out to the community, reaches out to the patients, and collaborates with CIRM’s Alpha Clinics. That’s the core of our program.”
Throughout, she received guidance and assistance from Mark Walters, MD, the UCSF Alpha Clinic Team Program Director and Jordan Family Director of Bone Marrow Transplantation at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. UCSF will provide continuous education for the cellular therapy team, she said.
UC Davis and UCSF Alpha Clinics will be the CCCE’s ongoing Alpha Clinic partners. “We won’t obviously be able to offer everything, but we will be facilitating referrals, and we will be having a navigator who helps facilitate referrals and support for patients to go to the trials in one of the clinics. So, we will be part of the network.”
UCSF will also continue to serve as an educational and training resource for staff, as well as provide training for a fellow in a cellular therapy fellowship program. “The fellow spends six months there (at UCSF in San Francisco) and then comes here for six months and works with us,” said Abdulhaq, who is director of the Hematology/Oncology fellowship program at UCSF Fresno.
“We want to build the physician workforce. We want to grow the team. This is not a one man’s work,” she laughed and added, “or a one woman’s work.”
