Dr. Kirschbaum is the director of New Drug Development for the Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation at City of Hope. He focuses his efforts on preclinical and clinical studies using molecular and epigenetic based therapies for hematologic malignancies. He serves as hematologic malignancies coordinator for the California Cancer Consortium, which is a major component of City of Hope's federally funded grant for phase I and phase II clinical trials through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP).

Before joining City of Hope, Dr. Kirschbaum’s accomplishments included developing protocols for novel cell therapies for the treatment of leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, ovarian, breast and gastric cancers  as well as graft versus host disease. Dr. Kirschbaum was part of the team that developed the initial reduced intensity stem cell transplant regimen, which is now widely used. His current project goals are to devise optimal nontoxic targeted treatments for leukemia and lymphoma that would also be applicable to the older patients.