Fighting Tumours with Modified Immune Cells

Ugur Uslu would only have left the laboratory of CAR-T cell pioneer Carl June at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in the US for Würzburg. And the dermatologist has convinced everyone: since 1 October 2025, he is Professor of Dermatological Oncology at the Faculty of Medicine of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) and Senior Physician in the Department of Dermatology, Venereology and Allergology at Würzburg University Hospital (UKW). For the 38-year-old, Würzburg is the perfect place to advance his translational research.

Optimal Conditions for Clinical Research

"I'm really looking forward to getting started in Würzburg, taking on responsibility and making a difference - both in patient care and in research," says Ugur Uslu. His expertise lies in modified immune cells for tumour therapy. He would like to continue his research in this area and ideally transfer the results directly to the clinic so that patients can benefit from the progress made as quickly as possible.

Clinical research is close to his heart, and the conditions in Würzburg are ideal for this. "The Department of Dermatology under the direction of Professor Matthias Goebeler is very successful and extremely well structured. There is also the Chair of Cellular Immunotherapy, where Professor Michael Hudecek and his team are helping to shape CAR-T cell research internationally."

CAR-T cell therapy is considered a milestone in modern cancer therapy. It involves genetically modifying the patient's own T cells so that they carry a so-called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that specifically recognises and destroys cancer cells.

"Professor Uslu is a great asset to our university. We are very much looking forward to continuing our collaboration," says University President Paul Pauli. And Matthias Goebeler adds: "Ugur Uslu is a proven CAR T-cell expert and will strengthen this focus of the faculty." Ugur Uslu fits perfectly into the team and is an ideal successor to Professor Bastian Schilling, who took over as Director of the Department of Dermatology at Frankfurt University Hospital last year.

Targeted Immune Responses against Tumours

Ugur Uslu was born in 1987 as the son of Kurdish immigrants in Backnang (Baden-Württemberg). He studied human medicine at the University of Tübingen on a scholarship from the Hans Böckler Foundation and completed his doctorate on the course of disease in patients with malignant melanoma in the head and neck area.

He completed his further training as a specialist in skin and venereal diseases at Erlangen University Hospital under Gerold Schuler, then Director of the Department of Dermatology, who introduced him to cellular immunotherapy. Schuler shaped research into tumour vaccines by using dendritic cells to trigger targeted immune responses against tumours. In doing so, he made a significant contribution to the development of innovative approaches in personalised cancer immunotherapy.

"In Erlangen, I was lucky enough to work in the in-house GMP laboratory on the production of tumour vaccines as part of investigator-initiated trials (IITs)," reports Ugur Uslu. This involves taking so-called monocytes from patients, which are differentiated into dendritic cells in the laboratory and "loaded" with tumour antigens.

"As a scientist and doctor, I was working right at the interface between the clinic and research. I was able to administer the products that we produced ourselves to patients and follow the course of treatment. That was extremely exciting."

Uslu is looking forward to working more closely with his colleagues in Erlangen again in the future. The UKW cooperates closely with the University Hospital Erlangen and other university locations, including the Bavarian Centre for Cancer Research (BZKF) and the National Centre for Tumour Diseases NCT WERA.

Postdoc in the Laboratory of a CAR-T Cell Pioneer

In 2020, Ugur Uslu habilitated on the topic of T-cell-based immunotherapies and applied to Carl H. June, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies (CCI). June is regarded as a pioneer of CAR-T cell therapy and developer of the first approved CAR-T cell product. This was launched on the market as Kymriah® in collaboration with Novartis and was initially approved for the treatment of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and later also for aggressive B-cell lymphomas.

"When CAR-T cell therapy was approved in the USA in 2017 and a year later in Europe, the research community experienced a significant upswing in interest in this approach," recalls Ugur Uslu. However, he had already gained experience with CAR-T cells in Erlangen and conducted research on them as part of intramural funding.

When he took up his postdoc position in Carl June's laboratory in 2020, it was a dream come true for him. "I am very grateful to have Carl as a mentor and look forward to our continued close collaboration," says Ugur Uslu. He was particularly impressed by the infrastructure at the June Laboratory at the CCI. "The pipeline, in which preclinical results are quickly transferred to early clinical trials, is impressive. We need to get there in Germany too."

Local Administration of CAR-T Cells Improves Success

One of his preclinical studies on the intraoperative use of CAR-T cells, which he published in Science Advances in 2023, was also transferred to a clinical trial. "In some tumour entities, the tumour cannot be completely removed surgically. Our idea was to apply CAR-T cells locally to the surgical wound using a fibrin glue-based carrier during the surgical procedure in order to combat any remaining cancer cells," Uslu explains.

In fact, this method led to a significantly longer overall survival in the mouse model compared to mice that only underwent surgery or in which the CAR-T cells were applied without fibrin glue solution.

In addition to the rapid clinical translation, he was particularly impressed by the team spirit in June's lab. "Carl asked everyone, regardless of rank or name, for their opinion. He was always interested and absolutely collaborative," says Uslu. He had the offer to stay in Philadelphia. But now he wants to build his own team - with the enriching experiences from Philadelphia and Erlangen, in the innovative and interdisciplinary Würzburg University Medical Centre.