2ⁿᵈ Edition of the Cancer R&D World Conference 2026

Biography

Associate Professor Dr. Thomas Böldicke received his PhD 1982 at the Max-Planck-Institut of Molecular Genetics, Berlin. He started his carrier as post doc at the German Research Centre for Biotechnology (GBF, Braunschweig, Germany) in the Department of Genetics and Cell Biology by John Collins. Now he is senior scientist at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI, former GBF) and project leader intrabodies. He developed recombinant antibodies against tumor antigens, particularly against tumour angiogenesis, rhabdyomyosarcoma and recently against TLR2 and TLR9 in pancreatic cancer. He edited two books: “Protein Targeting Compounds” with Springer (2016) and “Antibody Engineering” with IntechOpen (2017). He has published 25 Pubmed manuscripts. Over 10 years he gave lectures at the Technical University in Braunschweig about immunology, cancer development and immunotherapies. He is in the editorial board of the journal Antibodies as academic editor, Frontiers in Immunology and Frontiers in Oncology. 

Abstract

Over the last two decades cancer immunotherapy has been developed with substantial success demonstrating prolonged survival of patients with rapidly fatal cancers. Recombinant antibodies and, more recently, T cell receptor (TCR) engineered T-cell therapies represent two immunological strategies that have come to the forefront of clinical interest for targeting intracellular neoantigens in benign and malignant diseases. T cell-based therapies targeting neoantigens use T cells expressing a recombinant complete TCR (TCR-T cell), a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) with the variable domains of a neo-epitope-reactive TCR as a binding domain (TCR-CAR-T cell) or a TCR-like antibody as a binding domain (TCR-like CAR-T cell). Furthermore, synthetic T cell receptor and antigen receptor (STAR) and heterodimeric TCR-like CAR (T-CAR) are designed as a double-chain TCR-based receptor with variable regions of immunoglobulin heavy and light chains (VH and VL) fused to TCR-C and TCR-C, respectively, resulting in TCR signaling. In contrast to the use of recombinant T cells, anti-neopeptide MHC complex (pMHC) antibodies and intrabodies neutralizing intracellular neoantigens can be more easily applied to cancer patients. However, different limitations should be considered, such as the loss of neoantigens, the modification of antigen peptide presentation, tumor heterogenicity, and the immunosuppressive activity of the tumor environment. The simultaneous application of immune checkpoint blocking antibodies and of CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing tools to engineer different recombinant T cells with enhanced therapeutic functions could make T cell therapies more efficient and could pave the way for its routine clinical application. 

Keywords: Neoantigens; TCR-like antibodies; intrabodies; bispecific antibody (CD3 x TCR; CD3 x TCR like antibody); TCR CARs; TCR-like CARs; T CARs; STARs; therapeutic mRNA; checkpoint blocking antibodies; CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing