Andreas Kienzle

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Evaluation of Tumor Neoepitopes in Blood for Personalized Immunotherapy

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have transformed the treatment of cancer. ICIs can induce durable responses and prolong survival, but only in a subset of patients. Identifying reliable biomarkers for patients that are expected to benefit from treatment with ICIs is therefore of high interest in the era of precision medicine. Neoepitopes are promising biomarkers for ICIs because they are specific to cancer cells and important for tumor cell recognition. However, the limited availability of tissue as the primary source of neoepitope detection challenges this approach. Therefore, the aim of this project is to identify mutation-derived neoepitopes in the blood of cancer patients by sequencing-guided immunopeptidomics. As a long-term goal, we want to use our sensitive pipeline to clinically evaluate the predictive value of neoepitope detection in blood for ICI therapy outcome in larger patient cohorts. In addition, detected blood neoepitopes may serve as targets in personalized immunotherapies.

since Jun 2023
Inter-institutional PhD Student, Medical University of Vienna, Austria & German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg

2019 - 2023
MSc Chemistry, University of Vienna, Austria
(Master thesis in the Christian Doppler Lab for Personalized Immunotherapy, Medical University Vienna, Austria)

2019
Research Internship, Department of Analytical Chemistry, BioNTech, Munich, Germany

2014 - 2019
BSc Chemistry, University of Applied Science Aalen