Group Leader, Senior Scientist
University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
My name is PhD Katja Klausz and I'm heading a group focusing on the development of novel antibodies and antibody-derived molecules for cancer immunotherapy, especially Multiple Myeloma and other hematological malignancies, at the Division of Antibody-based Immunotherapy (head: Prof. Matthias Peipp) at the Department of Internal Medicine II of the University Medical Center in Kiel. I was born in 1980 and studied biology at the University of Rostock, Germany. In 2005, I began my doctoral studies at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany, and received the PhD in 2009 after doing part of my work at the A.I. Virtanen Institute in Kuopio, Finland. Then I moved to the Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Immunotherapy (head: Prof. Martin Gramatzki) at the Department of Internal Medicine II of the University Medical Center in Kiel, Germany, where I started working on antibodies for cancer immunotherapy. Today, I'm a group leader and senior scientist at the Division of Antibody-based Immunotherapy at the Department of Internal Medicine II of the University Medical Center in Kiel. My group works on the generation and functional in vitro and in vivo characterization of therapeutic antibodies and antibody-based molecules to improve immunotherapy of especially hematological malignancies. In addition, we aim to identify novel protein and sugar targets on tumor cells, which can be suitable for antibody-based therapeutic approaches. Thereby, we also work together in long-standing collaborations with other national and international research groups and the pharmaceutical companies.