Waseem Qasim is a Pediatric Immunologist and Professor of Cell and Gene Therapy at UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. He trained in Medicine in Newcastle and London and subsequently undertook PhD research into T cell gene therapies. Waseem has led bench-to-bedside development of translational gene therapies, including first-in-human trials of T cells engineered to express chimeric antigen receptors, recombinant T cell receptors or suicide genes. He has extensive expertise in lentiviral vectors and was among the first to incorporate genome editing technology, leading to trials with TALEN engineered cells and most recently CRISPR/Cas9 for the treatment of relapsed leukemia.