CCU Neuroimmunology and Brain Tumor Immunology

Prof. Michael Platten, MD
Group Leader

Claudia Koch
UMM Assistant

Marie-Christine Wagner, PhD
Project management DKFZ

Michael Breckwoldt, MD, PhD, PD, Group Leader
Michael is a physician-scientist (MD, PhD) and Group leader in the lab. He is also a clinical attending in the department of neuroradiology (University Clinic Heidelberg). He is interested in molecular imaging approaches using high field MRI (9.4 T) of glioma models to visualise glioma hallmarks such as inflammation in the TME with iron oxide nanoparticles and tumor cell infiltration. Michael is using correlative optical imaging methods (2-Photon, confocal and light sheet microscopy of cleared specimen) to validate MR imaging findings and develop MR imaging signatures of therapy response and resistance towards immunotherapy. His projects are supported by the Emmy Noether Programm of the DFG, the SFB 1389 (“Unite Glioblastoma”) and the Else Kröner Fresenius Stiftung.

Theresa Bunse (née Schumacher), PhD, Group Leader
Theresa is a postdoctoral scientist who joined the lab in 2010 for her PhD thesis, during which she worked on the development of glioma-specific vaccination. She continued this work in her postdoctorate and now focuses on immune modulatory mechanisms in the glioma microenvironment during immunotherapy. Her research is funded by the DFG and the Deutsche Krebshilfe.

Lukas Bunse, MD, PhD, Group Leader
Lukas is physician scientist at University Hospital Mannheim and joined the lab in 2012. During his medical thesis he worked on glioma specific immunotherapy and continued to work on immunomodulatory oncometabolites in gliomas during his PhD thesis. With his general interest in novel immunotherapeutic strategies for neurologic diseases, he was trained at Medical Faculty Heidelberg, Heidelberg University, Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, Harvard Medical School, and at Institute of Neurology, University College London. His training and research have been funded by DFG, EKFS, University Faculty Mannheim, University Faculty Heidelberg, DKFZ, Swiss Bridge Foundation, Dres. Bayer-Foundation, Sybille Assmus Foundation, and Bayer.

Edward Green, PhD, Group Leader
Ed is a postdoctoral scientist spearheading the D170’s efforts to discover tumor-reactive TCRs, combining deep learning bioinformatics approaches with single cell repertoire analyses. Ed has created novel techniques for TCR cloning, and collaborates extensively with DKFZ’s DNA vector group to develop the next generation of ‘immunologically invisible’ plasmids for personalised cancer (immuno)therapies. Ed’s team leads the groups efforts to develop and implement new NGS technologies, including high throughput screening projects using DNA barcoding. Ed’s projects are funded by a Baden-Württemberg Stiftung „Internationale Spitzenforschung“ grant, a DKFZ-NCT joint initiative for establishing personalised immunotherapies, a ‘lighthouse’ project of the new Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology, an innovation award from the UNITE GLIOBLASTOMA consortium, and several awards from Heidelberg University’s ‘Excellence Strategy’ flagship initiative ‘Engineering Molecular Systems’.

Iris Mildenberger, MD, Group Leader
Postdoctoral scientist and resident neurology, head of clinical trials and biobanking at UMM

Isabel Poschke, PhD, Group Leader
Isabel heads the NCT immune monitoring unit, which performs high parametric immune profiling on blood and tissue samples of patients enrolled in a variety of phase I and phase II clinical trials. Our particular interest is the single cell determination of T cell functionality by flow cytometry, Elispot and high-throughput single-cell sequencing, as well as the discovery of tumor-antigen-reactive TCRs.

Katharina Sahm (née Ochs), MD, Group Leader
Postdoctoral scientist and resident neurology

Tamara Boschert, M.Sc.
Tamara Boschert is a PostDoc who joined the lab in Jan 2021 as a PhD student who obtained her master‘s degree in Molecular Medicine at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Her research focuses on the discovery of T- and B- cell receptors in vaccinated patients with diffuse midline glioma expressing the recurrent point mutation K27M in the Histone-3 gene. She is aiming to develop a personalized CD4+ T-cell immunotherapy against diffuse midline glioma.

Niklas Graßl, M.D.
Niklas studied physics and medicine in Munich, Chicago and New York and is now a physician scientist at University Hospital Mannheim. He is interested in the genetic evolution of gliomas and immunotherapy against H3K27 mutant diffuse midline glioma. His research is funded by the DFG.

Tom Kuhn, M.D.
Tom is a Neurology resident and Clinician Scientist at University Hospital Mannheim. He conducted his doctoral thesis at Yale, USA in the Interventional Oncology Research Lab, focusing on interventional treatments for cancer. Trained in Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Bern, he now collaborates with the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit as a clinician scientist joined between the University Hospital Mannheim, DKFZ, and EMBL. His research centers on enhancing cellular therapies for glioma using focused ultrasound and to identify key ECM components targetable by mechamedication.

Katharina Lindner, M.Sc.
Katharina is a postdoc working on the discovery of brain tumor-reactive T cell receptors against patient-individual neoantigens as well as the shared driver mutation R132H mutation in isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1R132H). She established a warehouse of IDH1R132H-reactive TCRs from HLA-diverse patients of the NOA16 and NOA21 clinical trials, which she is characterizing in depth to gain a deeper understanding of the immunology behind the IDH1R132H long peptide vaccine, using for example single cell sequencing of tumor samples and TCRβ deep sequencing of blood. She is working in close collaboration with the Immune Monitoring Unit at the NCT.

Jakob Rosenbauer, M. Sc.
Jakob works on the integration of multi-omics data from clinical trials to identify predictive biomarkers and characterize what drives the intra-tumoral immune response after stimulation. His focus is on the application of spatial transcriptomics techniques and identifying the local prerequisites for an anti-tumor immune response.

Khwab Sanghvi, M.Sc.
Khwab is a Postdoc working on developing a workflow for identification and functional testing of T-cell receptors against neo-antigens in glioma, namely mutant IDH1 – a driver mutation in low grade gliomas. He is interested in developing a CD4+ T-cell based immunotherapy against gliomas.

Chin Leng Tan, M.Sc.
Chin Leng is a PostDoc in our lab who is interested in the identification of tumour-reactive T cell receptors (TCRs). By harnessing the power of single-cell sequencing and bioinformatics tools, he tries to determine the signature of tumour reactivity either in term of transcriptomic profile or CDR3 regions of TCR. His works involve both human and mouse TCR from glioblastoma and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Dennis Agardy, M.Sc.
Dennis is a PhD student who obtained his Master’s degree in Immunology and Inflammation at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He specialized in cancer immunology and immunotherapy during his stays at the Karolinska Institute and the Danish National Center for Cancer Immune Therapy. During his PhD he is investigating the role of type I interferon signaling in hypermutated glioblastomas and melanoma brain metastases and the impact on immunotherapies. With his research about the response and resistance of checkpoint inhibitors in melanoma brain metastases he is also a member of the DFG-funded RTG2099 "Hallmarks of Skin Cancer" at the University Hospital Mannheim.

Yu-Chan Chih, M.Sc.
Yu-Chan Chih is a PhD student who joined the lab in Aug 2020. He holds two Bachelor degrees and one Master degree in the field of Biosciences from National Yang-Ming University (now Yang-Ming Chiao-Tung University), Taiwan. While Yu-Chan was working on fundamental research in his B.Sc. and M.Sc. theses, he has developed interest in Translational Science, and thereby, he is now focused on cell therapy targeting tumor-associated antigens; in the meantime, he also investigates how cancer cells evolve to evade from immune monitoring using state-of-the-art single-cell technologies. Yu-Chan is funded by DKFZ.

Henrike Feldmann, M.Sc.
Henrike Feldmann is a PhD student who joined the lab in November 2023 who obtained her master’s degree in Neuroscience at King’s College London, UK. Her research focuses on the modulation of the tumor microenvironment in IDH1 mutant gliomas and on tumor-derived extracellular vesicles. She is aiming at developing a novel combination therapy against IDH1 mutant gliomas that modulates the antigen presentation capacity and characterizing the interactions between extracellular vesicles and local and systemic immune cells, as well as exploring the therapeutic potential of extracellular vesicles.

Hannah Gelhaus, M. Sc.
Hannah is a PhD student who joined the lab in April 2024 after completing her Master’s degree in Biochemistry at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on characterizing MHC class II antigen presentation in brain tumors and its impact on T cell antitumor activity. By unraveling MHC class II-dependent effects on intratumoral T cell-cell interactions and investigating the role of MHC class II antigen presentation by γδ T cells in brain tumors, the project aims to identify potential new targets for novel combinatorial therapeutic strategies.

Vahid Khaki, M. Sc.
Vahid has a bachelor’s in medical laboratory sciences, and a master’s in medical Immunology (Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences). He started in September 2024 a PhD project funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Networks Glioresolve program (grant agreement No 101073386). His PhD is focused on developing a bispecific Antibody for a tumour associated antigen in glioblastoma.

Marie-Therese Neuhoff, M. Sc.
Marie is a PhD student in the Immunogenomics team and obtained her master's degree in Molecular Biotechnology from the University of Heidelberg. Her research concentrates on advancing and developing ultra high-throughput single cell sequencing technologies to better explore the enormous diversity present within the human T cell repertoire.

David Palmero Cantón, M. Sc.
David is a PhD student who joined the lab in October 2023 and is funded by the DKFZ International PhD Program. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology at the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain) and his Master’s degree in Molecular Biosciences with a major in Cancer Biology at Heidelberg University and the DKFZ. During his PhD, he aims at characterizing and identifying tumor-reactive T cell signatures and T cell receptors in malignant gliomas as well as in brain metastases. Furthermore, his work on brain metastasis focuses on investigating cellular interactions orchestrating anti-tumor T cell responses.

Alina Paul, M. Sc.
Alina joined the lab in June 2023 after completing her Master’s degree in Molecular Biosciences with a major in Cancer Biology. Her PhD project aims to unravel the underlying mechanism of MHC class II-dependent T cell control of brain tumors. One focus of her research will be the meningeal niche, where she aims to dissect the multidirectional cellular communication network that orchestrates an effective T cell response.

Georgios Samaras, M. Sc.
Georgios holds a Bachelor degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Democritus University of Thrace and a Master degree in Translational Medical Research from Heidelberg University. Before joining the lab in October 2023 as a PhD student, Georgios worked as a Research Assistant at BioMed X. His PhD is focused on the development and in-vivo monitoring of CAR-T cells targeting H3K27M+ diffuse midline glioma based on the BCR sequences obtained from patients vaccinated with an H3K27M-specific cancer vaccine.

Saskia Stange, M. Sc.
Saskia is a PhD student who obtained her master‘s degree in Biochemistry at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on the analysis of blood and tumor samples from an established glioma patient cohort to identify novel TCRs with a specificity for additional shared or patient-individual neoepitopes expressed on tumor cells.

Clara Tejido Dierssen, M. Sc.
Clara has a bachelor’s in Health Biology (University of Alcalá de Henares, UAH), a Master in Biomedical Sciences (KU Leuven) and a Master in Bioinformatics (Autonomous University of Barcelona, UAB). She started in July 2023 a PhD project funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Networks Glioresolve program (grant agreement No 101073386). Her PhD is focused on unraveling the interactome of T-cells and endothelial cells in GBM. The goal is to find targets for T cell engineering in order to improve their infiltration in the tumor microenvironment.

David Vonhören, M.Sc.
David joined the lab as a PhD student in August 2022 after finishing the DKFZ master program. In his PhD he aims to characterize the interaction between NK and T-cells in order to shed light on T-cell regulation in immunotherapies. Additionally, he is interested in the dynamics of the tumor-microenvironment in IDH-mutant brain tumors.

Belize Acharya
Belize is a third-year medical student at the university of Heidelberg and has joined our lab for her MD in April 2024. Her doctoral project revolves around modulatory crosstalks of innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) and natural killer cells in glioma, particularly in the context of T cell-driven immunotherapies. Finding out more about these cells’ functions and interactions within the tumor microenvironment holds promise for combinatorial immunotherapeutic approaches.Her work is supported by the Bristol Myers Squibb Doctoral Scholarship for Immuno-Oncology.

Kuralay Aman
Kuralay is a medical student, who joined the lab in October 2023. The focus of her MD thesis is T cell therapy targeting cancer-associated antigens. She will also be identifying microenvironmental determinants for the success of adoptive cell transfer with extensive but established TCR screening and state-of-the-art bioinformatic technologies. Her research is supported by the Heinrich F.C. Behr-Stiftung.

Lucas Arnoldt
Student Assistent

Isabelle Bernhardt
Isabelle is an MD student who has joined the lab in September 2021. She is investigating immunotherapeutic approaches and employing cutting edge technology in order to improve glioma response to immune-checkpoint blockade. Additionally, Isabelle aims at enhancing glioma response to immunotherapy by elucidating endothelial-immune cell interaction and enhancing T cell homing. Her research is supported by the DFG-funded GRK 2727/1 – InCheck „Innate Immune Checkpoints in Cancer and Tissue Damage".

Andreas Dobbelstein
Andreas is a third-year medical student at Heidelberg University who joined the lab in April 2024. During his MD-thesis he aims to improve adoptive cell therapy for patients with glioblastoma. He is working on optimizing novel treatment strategies combining TCR-transgenic T-cell therapy with tumor-vaccines.

Amelie Dietsch
Amelie is a medical student at Heidelberg University and has joined the lab in October 2022. During her MD thesis she will be working on improving the intratumoral immune response in multicellular glioma organoids with small-molecule inhibitors and adoptive cell therapy. Her research is funded by the Mildred-Scheel Doctoral Programme of the German Cancer Aid.

Alina Errerd
Alina is a master's student who started her thesis in the immunogenomics team in August 2024. She is working on identifying CD8+ T cell receptors in H3K27M mutation-bearing diffuse midline glioma patients after vaccination.

Julian Hlawatsch
Julian is a medical student at Heidelberg University and joined the lab in March 2024. He is working on characterizing the immune-repertoire in patients diagnosed with dedifferentiated liposarcoma to gain a better understanding of the immunogenicity of fusion-derived neoepitopes.

Zeren Hu
Zeren is a MD student at Heidelberg University who joined the lab in October 2023. She is interested in improving the treatment response of glioma patients through combination immunotherapy. Her project also aims to investigate potential synergism between small molecule inhibitor and adoptive cell therapy.

Julia Gellert
Julia is a MD student from the Heidelberg University who joined the lab in April 2021. She is working on the effects of tumoral type I interferons on melanoma brain metastases in the context of radiation-immunotherapy. Her research is being supported by the DFG-funded RT2099 („Hallmarks of Skin Cancer“)

Niklas Kehl
Niklas is an MD Student at Heidelberg University, who joined the lab in April 2020. He is working on the identification and therapeutic exploitation of novel tumor-specific antigens, by linking immunotherapeutic approaches and single-cell transcriptomics. He is supported by the DFG-funded RTG2099 ("Hallmarks of Skin Cancer").​

Philipp Koopmann
Philipp is a medical student at Heidelberg University who joined the lab at the beginning of 2022. During his MD thesis, he is working on the identification and characterization of tumor-antigen reactive T-cell receptors in Brain metastases.

Marta Merlo
Marta is a Master's student in Molecular Biosciences with a major in Cancer Biology at Heidelberg University and DKFZ. She joined the lab in October 2024 for her thesis, which will focus on unravelling the relationship between diet, modulation of the immune system and brain tumor growth, with a specific interest in NK and T cells.

Julius Michel
Julius is a MD student at Heidelberg university who joined the lab in September 2020. He is working on improving IDH1 peptide vaccination as immunotherapeutic approach in glioblastoma. He is also interested in investigating the immune cell interaction in neurodegenerative diseases on a single cell level by using single-cell transcriptomic technology. He is supported by the Mildred School Doctoral Programme of the German Cancer Aid.

Hao Qi, M.Sc
Master student

André Scheiner
André is a medical student at Heidelberg University and has joined the lab in September 2022. During his MD thesis he will work on telomerase targeting methods including a compound called THIO and its effects on gliomas.

Robi Schramm
Robi is an MD Student, who joined the lab in March 2022. He is working on different methods to facilitate Adoptive Cell Therapy in the treatment of gliomas.

Verena Turco
Verena is a MD student working on the mechanisms of response to immune-checkpoint blockade in glioma. Moreover, she is also interested in harnessing innate immunity in glioma therapy. Her project is funded by the Mildred-Scheel Doctoral Programme of the German Cancer Aid.

Binghao Zhao
Binghao is a medical doctoral student in Platten’s lab. As a surgeon-scientist, he has strong interest in cancer immunology and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq). Currently, he is involved in two projects, one is about the IDH-vaccine and related TME characteristics; the other is about using scRNA-seq and spatial transcriptomics to further analyze individual samples obtained from the NOA-21 trial (NCT03893903).

Kristine Jähne
Kristine is a technician working on H3.3.K27M-specific immunotherapy as well as on the identification of immunotherapeutic targets within the glioma microenvironment. Her main task is understanding the role of AhR in different tumor models together with the Bayer Joint Lab.

Claudia Maldonado Torres, M. Sc.
Claudia is a research/technical assistant supporting the research of Dr. Edward Green by contributing to generate large datasets in the area of systems biology/cancer immunogenomics. Our main areas of focus are TCR repertoire analysis, whole genome library screening and cancer vaccine development.

Viktoria Sachs
Viktoria is a technician working on T cell therapies for brain tumor patients as well as on the identification of immunotherapeutic targets within the glioma microenvironment. Her main tasks are T cell receptor discovery and in vivo interactions and efficacy of engineered T cells.

You can find the Alumni of the Platten Lab here