Charité 3R cordially invites you to a lecture on patient-derived tumor models capturing immune cell cross talk and efficacy of immunotherapy in lung cancer presented by two outstanding experts in the field: Krijn Dijkstra, Netherlands Cancer Institute,and Lukas Ehlen, Experimental Immunotherapy, BIH Center for Regenerative Therapies and Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine (CCM/CVK),Charité.
- Venue: Charité Campus Mitte, Virchowweg 24, ground floor, Konrad-Cohn lecture hall
- REGISTER HERE until 03.12.2025!
- More information: here
Krijn Dijkstra (MD, PhD) performs research bridging tumor immunology, organoid technology, and cancer evolution. His work focuses on understanding how cancer cells drive immune evasion in heterogeneous tumors, using patient-derived tumor organoid–immune cell co-culture systems to dissect interactions between cancer and the immune system. During his Ph.D. in the laboratory of Emile Voest and Ton Schumacher at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, he pioneered the use of tumor organoid - T cell co-cultures to determine the efficacy of cancer-immune interactions. As a postdoctoral fellow with Charles Swanton at the Francis Crick Institute, he investigated clonal evolution and subclonal immune escape in lung cancer, work recently published in Cancer Cell.
Lukas Ehlen (MD) investigates patient-derived lung tumoroids as precision models to evaluate immunotherapy responses, with a focus on CAR T-cell therapies. His CAR T-cell testing platform recapitulates patient-specific treatment responses within clinical timeframes. Building on this, he develops organotypic cultures preserving cellular diversity and immune interactions for rapid post-surgical assessment. He advocates for the integration of patient-derived models as “patient avatars” in clinical decision-making to advance precision oncology (Nature Biotechnology, 2024).
After the lectures, there will be the opportunity to discuss with both speakers in a get-together from 5:30 pm on.