Katrin Kleinmanns

My project focuses on the development of immunocompetent patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models of ovarian carcinomas to improve therapeutic interventions through novel immune therapies and targeted fluorescence image-guided surgery. These advanced mouse models are additionally reconstituted with a functional human immune system, which replicate the heterogeneities observed in patient tumours whilst also reproducing key features of the human immune system. Immunotherapies, neither immune-checkpoint inhibitor nor chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, have been shown successful in ovarian carcinomas, yet. Key drivers for my project are the genomic and phenotypic characterization of our established PDX models including the verification of the genomic fidelity to the paired primary tumors as well as the phenotypic deciphering of the complex tumor microenvironment (TME). The aim of my projects is to provide a good and reliable preclinical animal model that combines the interactions of the TME, including human immune system and genomic evolution of tumor cells. I am involved in several collaboration projects focusing on overcoming treatment resistance in ovarian cancer, implementing time-domain fluorescence imaging and testing novel CAR T cell therapies in vivo.