Team NST

Oncology

Team NST

New Strategies to Engage Neutrophils in Solid Tumors

Neutrophils abundantly infiltrate the tumor microenvironment of various solid tumors and pose a potential target for therapeutic intervention to reprogram the immunosuppressive TME. However, several different tumor-associated neutrophil populations exist with poorly characterized phenotypic states and functions, which can be tumor-promoting or tumor-restraining. The challenge of Team NST is to better understand neutrophil context-specific functions and their contributions to immunosuppression and therapy resistance.

Our team will identify novel therapeutic vulnerabilities in neutrophils to target therapy-resistant neutrophil-high tumor microenvironment states for direct tumor killing. To uncover novel therapeutic targets harnessing neutrophil functions, we will be mimicking unique tumor microenvironment states in vitro by implementing a versatile platform and further investigate the neutrophil-centric cell-cell communication networks in tumors by integrating single cell RNA-sequencing and spatial transcriptomics data sets.

Mentors
  • Dr. Shingo Hotta (Industry mentor)
    Associate Director, Ono Pharmaceutical
  • TBD (Academic mentor)

The research of this team is kindly supported by Ono Pharmaceutical.

Our Team Members

Dr. Stefanie Bärthel

Group Leader

 Short Bio
  • 2022 – 2024: Postdoc in multimodal tumor microenvironment research in pancreatic cancer subtypes at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Munich/Heidelberg, Germany.
  • 2017 – 2022: PhD candidate in Medical Life Science and Technology at School of Medicine, TU Munich, Germany.
  • 2015 – 2017: Approbation as Pharmacist, University Leipzig, Germany
  • 2011 – 2015: Diploma in Pharmacy, University Leipzig, Germany
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