Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy (LIT) expands research team with Dr. Leo Scheller
We are excited to welcome Dr. Leo Scheller to our team. He will head the new research group “Structural Biochemistry” at the LIT, which develops synthetic receptors and protein therapeutics to improve the safety and efficacy of immunotherapies.
Article Details
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Date Published
May 15, 2025
About Dr. Leo Scheller
Dr. Leo Scheller extensively worked on engineering signal transduction in mammalian cells through protein design and synthetic biology.
During his Ph.D. at the ETH Zürich in Switzerland, he designed a receptor platform capable of sensing disease-relevant, soluble factors, a key step toward more precise immunotherapies. His main interest lies in using synthetic biology and protein design to engineer cell signaling for biomedical applications.
In his postdoctoral work, Dr. Scheller used computational protein design to develop switchable CARs and other biologics to enhance the safety and efficacy of immunotherapy. He first joined Prof. Bruno Correia‘s Laboratory of Protein Design and Immunoengineering at the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne. There, he used computational protein design tools to develop small molecule-responsive chimeric antigen receptors, which he tested in collaboration with Dr. Melita Irving and Prof. George Coukos at Ludwig Cancer Research. He then joined Prof. Denis Migliorini’s Brain Tumor and Immune Cell Engineering Laboratory at the University of Geneva, located at the Agora Cancer Research Center in Lausanne, to gain expertise in translational aspects of immunotherapy research.
Dr. Scheller now starts the Structural Biochemistry Group at the Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy (LIT), focusing on cell- and protein-based therapeutics that respond to tumor-derived stimuli.
Dr. Leo Scheller, Head of Research Group "Structural Biochemistry"
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