Welcome to the Alflen Laboratory

Research Interests

Cancer immunotherapies have revolutionized the treatment options for patients with advanced stage disease. However, only a subset of patients experiences (durable) response. Reasons for therapy failure can be tumor intrinsic, or due to alterations within the immune system.

Our group aims to understand the alterations of the immune system better, which contribute to treatment response and failure, especially in the context of T cell-based cancer immunotherapies like immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies.

By collaborations with several Departments and Institutes within the University Medical Center Mainz (Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, University Cancer Center (UCT), Department of Dermatology, Institute of Immunology, Institute of Pathology) and with the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) Mainz, we aim to perform highly translational as well as latest state of the art translational research..