DFG Research Funding for MSNZ Clinical Fellow Dr. Julien Subburayalu

Mildred Scheel Early Career Center (MSNZ) Clinical Fellow Dr. med. Julien Subburayalu has successfully secured new funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Within the framework of the DFG Walter Benjamin Program, Dr. Subburayalu will advance his research on human macrophages. The project is a collaboration between the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) and the Department of Internal Medicine at the Carl Gustav Carus University Hospital of the TU Dresden. The work is funded with a total of 130,000 EUR for a period of two years.

Macrophages are immune cells that can infiltrate tissues, including cancer tissue and solid tumors.  Macrophages can be modified to recognize and eliminate tumor cells. This makes them an attractive tool for advanced cancer treatment. To date, however, it is still difficult to obtain a sufficient number of macrophages for therapeutic purposes. In addition, tumor cells secrete specific factors that decrease the antitumor activity of macrophages, making them unable to eliminate the cancer cells.

The goal of Dr. Julien Subburayalu and Prof. Michael Sieweke is to modify human macrophages by targeted genetic modification to make them insensitive to the factors produced by the tumors and therefore able to destroy the tumor cells. The macrophages modified in this way could then be used as cell therapy for difficult ovarian and lung tumors. Such immunotherapies will be tested in clinical trials carried out together with the Early Clinical Trial Unit of the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) at the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus.

The project starts in April 2022.