Building Fitter T Cells to Fight Cancer
Audio will be available soon!
About this Podcast:
About the guest:
Prof. Roland Schelkar is a specialist in immunology and T-cell biology, with a research background spanning immune system engineering, adoptive cell therapies, and translational applications in oncology and genetic disorders. His work centers on understanding how T cells recognize threats, how they can be manipulated for therapeutic use, and why they are central to next-generation medical breakthroughs such as CAR-T therapy and immune-modulating treatments.
Episode overview:
In the premiere episode of The Cure Circle, host Dr. Smita Karpate speaks with Prof. Roland Schelker, clinician–scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Immunotherapy, whose work sits at the cutting edge of T-cell engineering, CAR-T therapy, and solid tumor immunotherapy.
In this episode, Prof. Schelkar and Dr. Smita discuss:
- Why the next frontier of immunotherapy is not just better CAR receptors but fitter, stem-like T cells
- How T-cell exhaustion limits current therapies and how TSCM engineering may overcome it
- Why certain tumors (like synovial sarcoma and myxoid liposarcoma) are ideal for next-generation TCR/T-cell trials
- How academic centers bring therapies from discovery to GMP to regulatory approval to first-in-human studies
- The real-world challenges clinicians face when treating cytokine release syndrome and other toxicities
- The critical role of collaboration between researchers, clinicians, GMP teams, and pharma
- Why global access matters and how countries like India can become hubs for scalable, cost-effective cell therapy
- The emotional side of breakthrough responses: what it feels like when a patient with metastatic cancer enters remission
