Peter Steinberger / Division of Immune Receptors and T cell Activation
We are interested in the role of cell surface molecules (costimulatory and coinhibitory molecules) expressed on human T cells and antigen-presenting cells (APC) in immune responses. For our studies we have developed cellular platforms that make it possible to efficiently analyse the contribution of individual receptors and ligands to T cell activation processes. This includes T cell stimulator cells (TCS) and engineered antigen presenting cells (eAPC) that express costimulatory and coinhibitory ligands of choice. In addition, we have developed highly sensitive fluorescent T cell reporter lines that can be engineered to express costimulatory and coinhibitory receptors of choice. Currently, we use these systems to study coinhibitory receptors such as PD1, BTLA and LAG3 and also to evaluate immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and costimulation agonists.
The transfer of T cells engineered to express tumor-specific T cell receptors (TCRs) or chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) holds great promises in the treatment of cancers. We have established collaboration with numerous research groups who use our T cell reporter lines for the assessment of TCRs or to study CAR-signaling. One important focus of our current work is the development of efficient inhibitory CAR (iCAR)-formats for the prevention of on-target-off tumor toxicities of CAR-T cell based therapies.