AG Wichmann
Group Members:
Mengdi Yin, MMed, PhD student
Clara Reinhold, PhD student
Nina Koch, MD student
Petra Cesari, MD student
Dr. phil. nat. Linping Chen-Wichmann, Lab-Manager
PD Dr. med. Christian Wichmann, PI
Manufacturing of engineered immune cells in vitro
In the raising field of cell therapy, we focus on engineering both Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells as well as CAR macrophages in vitro. Our scope is to modify the cells in a way to ensure both strong anti-cancer effects as wells as tight controllability to prevent unwanted side effects. For this, we develop -retro- and lentiviral vectors to stably express transgenes of interest. Furthermore, we aim to establish new methods to warrant large-scale production of immune cells for therapeutical use.
- Investigating the role of epigenetic regulators and transcription factors in leukemic cell expansion
During leukemogenesis, transcriptional regulators are frequently altered, resulting in uncontrolled proliferation and impaired differentiation of immature hematopoietic progenitor cells. Two prominent oncogenic fusion proteins arising from chromosomal translocations are RUNX1-ETO and MLL-ENL. To investigate their capacity to drive leukemic expansion, we use retroviral and lentiviral systems to inducibly express these fusion genes in primary human progenitor cells. Our aim is to understand the modular architecture of these fusion proteins and to dissect the molecular mechanisms underlying ex vivo expansion and transformation of hematopoietic progenitor cells.
