Experimental Cell Therapy

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, originally developed to treat cancer, have shown remarkable early results in patients with rheumatic diseases. However, significant challenges remain, including toxicities from preconditioning lymphodepletion and prolonged B cell depletion, the need for administration in specialized centers, limited manufacturing capacity, and financial burden. Our group collaborates with the fully automated robotic platform operated jointly by Charité and the DRFZ. The high-quality, comprehensive multi-omics data generated by this platform are used to identify biological nuances and engineer smarter cell therapies that overcome these barriers. We use state-of-the-art methods in protein design and genetic engineering to develop and characterize the next generation of precision cell therapies for clinical translation.