Dr. Kaufman is a Professor in Department of Medicine, Division of Regenerative Medicine and Director of the Cell Therapy program at the University of California- San Diego. Dr. Kaufman does clinical work in hematology/BMT. His research focuses on use of human pluripotent stem cells to study development of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, lymphocytes, and other mesodermal lineages. In particular, his studies have developed efficient means to produce natural killer cells from human ES cells and iPSCs suitable for new clinical applications to treat relapsed/refractory cancers- both hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. Current studies aim to translate use of these cells into clinical therapies and to engineer these NK cells with receptors to improve killing of cancer cells.