This year’s Friedmund Neumann Prize Winner, Judith Feucht, studies the further development and improvement of cellular immune therapies, especially with chimeric antigen receptor T cells (“CAR T cells”). In T cell therapies, immune cells from the patient’s blood are isolated and genetically modified to enhance their specificity and effectiveness against cancer cells. CAR T cells have achieved great clinical success especially in hematological cancer and acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Despite a high initial response rate, some patients suffer from relapses, however, and some tumors only respond insufficiently to the therapy. Judith Feucht’s research aims to further improve CAR T cell therapy and also use it successfully in other major diseases.

Her previous research was able to show that the anti-tumor efficacy of CAR T cells can be significantly improved through specific modifications in their signal domains. Based on promising data, this CAR design is now being evaluated in clinical studies at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York. In addition, Feucht’s scientific work could contribute to the preclinical development of new CAR T cell therapies for patients with major non-malignant diseases and demonstrate the successful use of CAR T cells in combination therapies in solid tumors.

In her lecture, Ms. Feucht will present her latest research results to a scientific audience.