Dalia Haydar, PharmD, PhD

• Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cell Therapy, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN (2022)
• PhD, Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY (2018)
• PharmD, Pharmacy, Lebanese American University, Byblos, Lebanon (2013)

Dalia Haydar, PharmD, PhD, is an assistant professor of Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and program director of the Cancer Biology Track in GWU’s Institute for Biomedical Sciences PhD Program. She also serves as research faculty at the Center for Cancer and Immunology Research at Children’s National Hospital, where she directs a laboratory focused on advancing cellular immunotherapies for pediatric brain tumors.

Dr. Haydar’s research centers on engineering chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells and uncovering mechanisms of resistance that limit their efficacy in solid tumors. By integrating preclinical models with state-of-the-art technologies — including single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, functional genomics and advanced imaging — her team dissects barriers to T cell persistence, trafficking and function within the brain tumor microenvironment. A major focus is identifying immunosuppressive pathways, such as checkpoint receptors, myeloid-derived suppressor cells and metabolic constraints, and designing next-generation CAR strategies through approaches like epigenetic modulation and miRNA engineering.

Dr. Haydar is deeply committed to training, mentoring students from high school to postdoctoral levels, and fostering an inclusive and supportive environment through her leadership of GWU’s Cancer Biology PhD Program.

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics - George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences