Zahra Mehdizadeh Kashi, PhD, HCLD, is a board-certified molecular immunohematologist with nearly 25 years of experience in clinical laboratories, biologics, and pharmaceuticals. Dr. Kashi also has extensive leadership training, having completed more than 1,000 hours in areas such as clinical development and trial protocols, quality system auditing, GMP development and process, project management, inspection, regulatory agencies, strategic planning and business development. Dr. Kashi is a highly-sought clinical laboratory consultant, with dozens of peer-reviewed publications and abstracts, as well as numerous invited presentations. Over the years, Dr. Kashi has been a consultant for many Northwest and western state laboratories including LABS Inc., Fanno Creek Clinic, Portland Family Practice, Pediatric Associates of the Northwest, the Portland Clinic, VRL Laboratories, Portland Pain and Spine Clinic and the American Red Cross.
She is active in the American Society of Histocompatibility & Immunogenics where she is an inspector, and a liaison for the Relationship Testing Standards Program, and previously was a commissioner. She is currently an inspector for the College of American Pathologists and an expert witness on genetic identity. In addition, Dr. Kashi has served as a clinical assistant professor in the department of pathology/CLS at Oregon Health & Science University and has also held a number of other education and research positions at local universities, hospitals, and corporations. Dr. Kashi holds a doctorate degree in molecular immunohematology from Portland State University. She completed her doctoral thesis under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Heinrich at Oregon Health Sciences University. She also completed the Michigan Ross Executive Program at the University of Michigan in 2005. Recognizing the unmet needs for transplant/transfusion-related services in Oregon, Dr. Kashi founded Kashi Clinical Laboratories in May 2006. Her initial service was sequence-based HLA testing for Oregon Health Sciences University Transplant Program. Dr. Kashi then expanded her HLA and transplant test offerings to include drug sensitivity, disease association, genomic services, next generation sequencing for cancer screening, exome sequencing, custom target sequencing, RT-PCR for gene expression and SNP analysis. Dr. Kashi has incorporated a research and development arm to her laboratory to study diseases such as endometriosis and infertility. She continues to expand the genomic capabilities and the core competency of Kashi Clinical Laboratories.