Tahseen Mozaffar, MD., FAAN
Dr. Tahseen Mozaffar is a Professor of Neurology, Orthopaedic Surgery and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Interim Chair of Neurology at University of California, Irvine. He is the Director of the UC Irvine-MDA ALS and Neuromuscular Center and the Director of the UC Irvine Neuromuscular Program. Dr. Mozaffar serves as chair of one of the biomedical committees and the institutional liaison for Trials Innovation Hub for the Center for Translational Sciences Award (CTSA) at University of California, Irvine. He is the Principal Investigator for UCI-NEXT, the NeuroNEXT award to the University of California, Irvine, one of 25 such NeuroNEXT sites funded by the NINDS/NIH.
He graduated medical school at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan in 1989. After a rotating internship in Internal Medicine and General Surgery at the Aga Khan University Hospital, he came to the US for neurology residency training. He completed neurology residency training at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri in 1995 and then completed a two clinical and research fellowship in Neuromuscular Disorders at Washington University in 1997. After a three-year faculty appointment at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, Dr. Mozaffar returned to the US and was appointed as Assistant Professor of Neurology and Director, UC Irvine Neuromuscular Program University of California, Irvine in 2000, where he has built a nationally recognized clinical and research program in Neuromuscular Disorders.
He is actively involved in clinical and translational research in Neuromuscular Disorders, including currently serving as Principal Site Investigator on over a dozen clinical trials in myasthenia gravis, rare and ultra-rare myopathies and in immune myopathies. He has co-authored over 150 peer-reviewed publications and has authored or co-authored over a dozen book chapters and invited reviews. As an expert in these rare and ultra-rare myopathies, he is actively sought as an advisor by pharmaceutical companies for trial design and identifying disease targets. He serves on a global advisory board for Pompe at Amicus and for Spark Therapeutics. He serves on the Data Safety Monitoring Board for Acceleron. He is a standing reviewer for the ETTN study section at the NIH.
He is a member of the Medical Advisory Board for the Myositis Association and recently finished his term on the executive committee of the Muscle Study Group. He served on the conference planning committee for the MDA Clinic Directors Conference, 2nd Global conference on myositis (GCOM), the 3rd Global Myositis Conference, the Muscle Study Group, and the International Congress on Neuromuscular Disorders. He is the Director of the nationally recognized Annual UC Irvine Neuromuscular Colloquia, now in its 10th year of existence and Director of the Annual Neuromuscular Pathology Colloquium, now in its 5th year.
Dr. Mozaffar’s immunological research interests include characterization of the myopathology in various forms of immune myopathies, including the first description of myopathology in Jo-1 antibody associated myositis. Based on his seminal work, this form of immune myopathy has now been given a separate classification of anti-synthetase syndrome. His most recent work has been in various subtypes of dermatomyositis, immune mediated necrotizing myopathy and in collaboration with Professor S. Armando Villalta, a deep phenotyping of the immune infiltrates in sporadic inclusion body myositis. His other area of interest is myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease of the muscle. He is the site PI for the first CAR-T cell therapy trial in MG in collaboration with Cartesian Inc.