Dr. Erica R. Vander Mause

The Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy (LIT) and the German Rheumatology Research Center (DRFZ), a Leibniz Institute, have initiated the independent joint Experimental Cell Therapy Research Group. This venture combines the LIT’s expertise in engineered immune cell therapy with the DRFZ’s expertise in immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. Dr. Erica R. Vander Mause will lead the joint group Experimental Cell Therapy.

Dr. Vander Mause has extensive experience in gene and cell therapy, spanning over ten years across both academic and industrial environments. In the academic context, she developed single chain variable fragment (scFv) binding domains and optimized their affinity to selectively preserve cells with lower antigen density, without diminishing their cytotoxicity against cells exhibiting higher antigen density. She and her team also characterized how affinity affects the efficacy and persistence of CAR T cells. These findings helped demonstrate that trogocytosis is correlated with binding affinity. After her doctoral work, she spent time in industry R&D roles, translating cutting-edge discoveries in synthetic biology and precision genome editing techniques to deliver advanced CAR T cell therapies to the patients who need them.

Dr. Vander Mause’s new lab will leverage her combined academic and industry expertise to develop translatable precision CAR T cell therapies for rheumatic and autoimmune diseases. Her team will harness high-quality, comprehensive multi-omics clinical data, generated by partners at the DRFZ and Charité, to identify pathogenic cell populations. Following identification, she will employ advanced methods in protein design and genetic engineering to develop, characterize, and clinically translate logic-gated CAR T cells that selectively target the pathogenic cells.