Sheema Jamal Almozyan

Dr. Sheema Almozayan is a postdoctoral fellow in Cell Therapy and Immunobiology at KFSHRC and is currently undertaking her fellowship at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, MIT, in Prof. Jianzhu Chen’s laboratory, supported by the KACST–MIT Ibn Khaldun Postdoctoral Fellowship. She holds a PhD in Pre-clinical Oncology from the University of Nottingham and an MSc in Molecular Medicine from Trinity College Dublin.

Her research focuses on engineering CAR T-cell therapies, including TCR-like CAR constructs targeting intracellular tumor antigens, as well as antibody engineering and the development of CAR NK-cell platforms. She is also engaged in translational research and industry collaborations to advance innovative immunotherapeutic strategies, including the development of novel CAR NK-cell approaches for autoimmune diseases with potential clinical translation. In addition, she has extensive experience in patient-derived organoid (PDO) models, 3D tissue systems, genome editing, and preclinical platforms for evaluating cellular immunotherapies.

CAR T and CAR NK cell engineering and functional characterization

Next-generation and TCR-like CAR development

Antibody engineering for targeting intracellular tumor antigens

Translational cellular immunotherapy and therapeutic engineering

Patient-derived organoids (PDOs) and 3D tissue models for preclinical research

Extracellular vesicle isolation and characterization

CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing

Preclinical in vivo models for evaluation of cellular immunotherapies

Dr. Sheema Almozayan is a cancer immunotherapy researcher with expertise in cellular therapy, tumor immunology, and translational oncology. She holds a PhD in Pre-clinical Oncology from the University of Nottingham, an MSc in Molecular Medicine from Trinity College Dublin, and a BSc in Medical Laboratory Technology from Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University.

She began her research career at KFSHRC, where she contributed to a study on PD-L1 in breast cancer stem cells. She later completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Precision Immunology Institute, Mount Sinai, where she contributed to the development of CAR T-cell therapies for solid tumors.

From 2023 to 2026, she worked at KFSHRC in the Cell Therapy and Immunobiology Department, where she developed patient-derived colorectal cancer organoid models for preclinical CAR T-cell studies and contributed to research in extracellular vesicles and cellular immunotherapy. In 2026, she was awarded the KACST–MIT Ibn Khaldun Postdoctoral Fellowship and joined MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.