Mahmood Mohtashami

Mahmood Mohtashami is the co-founder and the current Head of Internal Research at ProTgen Inc. He received his PhD from University of Toronto at the Hospital for Sick Children Institute, Cell Biology Program, exploring the function of molecules involved in the fusion of synaptic vesicles to plasma membrane during neurotransmission.  He switched fields to join Juan Carlos (JC) Zúñiga-Pflücker’s lab as a Postdoc at Sunnybrook Research Institute and transitioned to Research Associate. As a Research Associate, he took over many administrative roles, including writing grants (CAD$3.8M), managing lab personnel, responsibilities for finance (budget and operations), compliance with regulations and interacting with institutional administration. During his time at the JCZP lab, his scientific contribution included discovering cues that are essential to early T cell development such as the influence of thymic architecture and importance of thymic stromal/ hematopoietic interactions. He is a co-patent holder for inventions that facilitate the delivery of molecular signaling for stem cell to T cell differentiation, which were foundational to creation of Notch Therapeutics, and recently, ProTgen Inc.