I was aware that some of the papers we published are highly cited, particularly our paper on the first use of peptide-pulsed dendritic cells. This is still a hot topic with intense research activities.

  What are the circumstances which led you to your work?

My scientific work has been centered on immunological recognition and therapy resistance of melanoma. The interest in tumor immunology was fostered during the years I spent with Dr. Lloyd Old and Dr. Pramod K. Srivastava at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. In the late eighties, the group studied the recognition of tumor cells by monoclonal antibodies and the first attempts were made to identify the underlying molecules. I performed my early studies on biochemical and molecular identification of one of these cell-surface antigens.

“Caring for patients with advanced melanoma was a particularly hard experience since no curative treatment is available.”

After returning to Germany, I finished my residency in Dermatology and established the first Melanoma Unit in Berlin. Caring for patients with advanced melanoma was a particularly hard experience since no curative treatment is available. This has led me on one hand to search for mechanisms conferring drug resistance and on the other hand to explore alternative treatment modalities coming back to tumor immunology. In the beginning of the nineties, recognition of melanoma cells by T cells and identified T-cell epitopes came more and more into focus, which led us to develop a series of experimental phase I/II clinical trials testing gene-modified tumor cells, synthetic peptides, and also autologous dendritic cells for vaccination.

  How would you describe the significance of this work for your field?

It is part of an effort of the scientific community to advance the field. There are so many questions still unsolved that we need a more structured development.

The field has evolved very rapidly with the introduction of numerous new techniques to study molecular and cellular events; e.g., in my postdoc times it took more than a week to prepare a cDNA library, but today you buy a kit and have what you want in a couple of hours. Several other key discoveries have been central to the development of this field: Tumor immunology has advanced with it now being clear that all human tumors are immunogenic—not only melanoma. Pioneering work by Thierry Boon’s, Giorgio Parmiani’s and Steven Rosenberg’s groups demonstrated that tumor cells are recognized by CD4 and CD8 T cells, and the molecules and mechanisms are identified. Furthermore, it has become clear that tumor cells can escape immune attack by various mechanisms, and our progress of understanding how vaccination is most effective is currently the limitation of tumor vaccination approaches.

  Where do you see this research going 10 years from now?

Understanding mechanisms conferring drug resistance will probably mean unveiling several more key targets to promote cell survival or to eliminate unwanted cells. A major development in therapeutic and preventive strategies will be based on future developments to predict patients’ prognosis and response to therapy using gene and proteomic profiling techniques. It is envisioned that patients may be subgrouped even before therapy with the capability to distinguish between patients benefiting from immunological therapies, cytotoxic drugs, or other modalities, such as signal transduction inhibitors.