Haig Aghajanian

Founder at Capstan Therapeutics

Speaker

Haig Aghajanian, PhD, is the Founder of Capstan Therapeutics and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his PhD and postdoctoral training at Penn, where he conducted seminal research on CAR T cell therapies beyond oncology, including CAR T approaches for fibrotic and inflammatory disease and targeted lipid nanoparticles to generate CAR T cells in vivo. This work led to the founding of Capstan Therapeutics, where he was the first employee and led research and early development efforts. In 2025, Capstan initiated a first-in-human in vivo CAR T clinical trial for autoimmune disease and was acquired by AbbVie to further the clinical programs and pipeline.