Institute for Translational Immune-Oncology
Our mission is to make immunotherapies more effective and available to patients in need.
Kindly send any enquiries to im1-ag-stripecke@uk-koeln.de
Research
The Translational Immune-Oncology develops and validates immunotherapies against leukemia, lymphoma and chronic herpes viruses for clinical uses:
Engineered T Cells
T cells are cells of the immune system that have the capacity to recognize antigens, produce inflammatory molecules, kill targets and maintain a long-term immunologic memory. We are engineering chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR T cells) that kill lymphoma cells and cells infected with Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV). The CRISPR / Cas9 gene editing technique is currently being used to make CAR T cells more effective, safer and more widely available for patients. These gene-edited CAR T cells are currently being tested pre-clinically in vitro and in vivo. The clinical development of CAR-T cells against lymphomas will follow as a cooperation with several clinicians at the University Hospital Cologne and biotech companies.
Engineered Dendritic Cells
Dendritic cells (DCs) are the professional antigen presenting cells of our immune system. Upon cancer and chronic infections, the function of DCs is affected and T cells are poorly activated. We developed tools to engineer DC precursors, so that they can be readily produced in clinical grade quality for infusion into patients with leukemia and other hematologic cancers.
Advanced mouse models for basic research and preclinical testing
Along with our cell engineering activities, we develop mouse models with implanted human cells. These models can sustain the development of a human immune system for several months. Thus, this opens a broad perspective to study the human immune system in vivo. For example, we use these models to understand the effects of herpes viruses (EBV and HCMV) in the immune responses. In addition, mice implanted with different types of human cells are being in development, so that we can merge the human immune system and the cancer in a single model. These models are in the forefront for testing the potency and safety of immunotherapeutic products, prior to their testing in patients.
Main Collaborations
Prof. Florian Klein: University Hospital Cologne / Cologne, Germany
Prof. Christoph Scheid: University Hospital Cologne / Cologne, Germany
Prof. Peter Jens Klußmann: University Hospital Cologne / Cologne, Germany
Dr. Dimitrius Wagner: Baylor College of Medicine / Houston, USA & Charité / Berlin, Germany
Prof. Lenny Shultz: The Jackson Laboratory / Bar Harbor, USA
Prof. Britta Eiz-Vesper: Hannover Medical School / Hannover, Germany
Prof. Toni Cathomen: University of Freiburg / Freiburg, Germany
Prof. Tobias Feuchtinger: University of Freiburg / Freiburg, Germany
Dr. Sagar: University of Freiburg / Freiburg, Germany
Dr. Sébastien Wälchli: Oslo University Hospital / Oslo, Norway
Current and Past Funding
- Cancer Research Center Cologne Essen
- Deutsche Krebshilfe
- The Jackson Laboratory
- Bundesministerium für Forschung und Bildung
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung
- Deutsche José Carreras-Stiftung
- Hector Stiftung
- Köln Fortune
Team
Scientific Manager
Dr. Milita Dargužytė (Humanized Mouse Models & Edited CAR-T cells)
Post Doc
Dr. Johannes Kühle
Technical Assistant
Tobias Wollmann
PhD Students
Jan-Malte Kleid, MSc (Gene edited CAR-T cells)
Human Resource & Administrative Manager
Ditte Schröder
Administrative Research Assistant
Michaela Sharp