Dimitrios Tzachanis, MD, PhD

Dimitrios Tzachanis, MD, PhD, is a board-certified hematologist and medical oncologist who specializes in treating people with cancers of the blood and lymph system, including lymphoma, myeloma, leukemia, myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN). He is a transplant physician for the joint UC San Diego Health / Sharp HealthCare Blood and Marrow Transplantation (BMT) Program, which provides comprehensive blood and marrow transplant services, including autologous and allogeneic stem cell transplantation.

Dr. Tzachanis offers chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy to adults with relapsed or refractory B-cell lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. CAR T-cell therapy harnesses the patient's own immune cells to recognize and kill cancer cells. It is just one of many types of personalized cancer therapies offered at UC San Diego Health.

As an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, Dr. Tzachanis instructs medical students, residents and fellows. His research interests include the manipulation of the immune system in cancer immunotherapy and graft versus host disease. He has co-authored many articles and his work has appeared in Nature, Immunology, Blood, the Journal of Immunology, The New England Journal of Medicine and Bone Marrow Transplantation, among others.

Dr. Tzachanis also serves as an ad hoc reviewer and editorial board member for several medical journals. Prior to joining UC San Diego Health, Dr. Tzachanis was a staff physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles and at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He has served as an assistant professor at UCLA and USC and as an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Tzachanis completed a fellowship in hematology and oncology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, as well as a research fellowship at the Department of Adult Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, both in Boston. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

Dr. Tzachanis earned his medical degree from the Aristotelian University School of Medicine in Thessaloniki, Greece and a doctorate in immunology from University of Athens School of Medicine. He is board-certified in internal medicine, hematology and medical oncology.

Dr. Tzachanis is a member of several professional societies, including the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society of Hematology, the American Society of Bone Marrow Transplantation and the American Association of Immunologists. He has been elected as a top physician in the Best Doctors in America® annual survey.

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