On 08 April 2022, Filippos Theofilos Charitidis (ESR9) received 3rd place in the Langen Junior Science Award for his publication on “Monitoring CAR T cell generation with a CD8-targeted lentiviral vector by single-cell transcriptomics”. The Langen Junior Science Award is awarded annually in recognition of particularly significant publications by young scientists of the Paul Ehrlich Institute.
His recognized work elaborates on how single-cell tanscriptome analysis can be used to better characterize heterogeneous drugs, such as CAR-T cells. CAR-T cells are immune system cells (T cells) of cancer patients, which are equipped with a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) outside the body by means of gene transfer. With the help of a CAR, the immune cells now recognize the cancer cells and kill them. Filip designed and ran the entire technological process, from the generation of the CAR-T cells to the generation of the single-cell RNA library to the bioinformatic evaluation of the extensive data. The work provides important findings on methodological and analytical approaches, along with answers to the question of why some cells within a culture are modified efficiently by gene transfer while others are not at all modified.
On behalf of the entire STACCATO consortium, we would like to congratulate Filip for his outstanding success.
