THE BINDER LAB
MASCHA BINDER
Lab head
Mascha heads the Medical Oncology at the University Hospital Basel. Before she was director of the Hematology/Oncology department at the University Medical Center in Halle (Saale). She studied medicine in Würzburg, Freiburg and Rome and worked as an oncologist at the University of Freiburg and Hamburg-Eppendorf. Clinically, she focuses on solid tumor immunotherapy and the treatment of lymphoid cancers. In her research, she strives for a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying resistance to develop next-generation targeting options.
Mascha is a big fan of immune repertoires, liquid biopsies and CAR-T cells.
LISA PASCHOLD
Postdoc
Lisa received her PhD in Biochemistry at the Leipzig University. She joined the Binder lab in 2019 as a wet lab scientist but her days have gotten increasingly dry. She especially enjoys deep diving into NGS data sets covering immunosequencing and somatic mutations. She is working on B and T cell receptor landscapes in hematological malignancies and infectious diseases. Accompanying clinical trials, often in the setting of immune checkpoint blockade in solid cancers, Lisa explores liquid biopsies to characterize both immune responses as well as tumor progress during therapy. Outside the lab you will find her by the seaside or hanging off a wall.
Postdoc
CHRISTOPH SCHULTHEISS
Christoph received his PhD in molecular genetics at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. After a detour to biotech industry he joined Mascha´s lab in Hamburg in 2018. He works on immuno-genetic questions related to autoimmunity, cancer and infection. In addition, he tries to better understand B cell receptor signaling and how therapeutic resistance works on the molecular level. It has become his lifetime task to convince R people that the terminal is not as beautiful as western blots. If he is not in the lab you can reliably find him at any nearby concert with at least one guitar on the stage.
EDITH WILLSCHER
Bioinformatician
Edith is a bioinformatician and mainly works in the field of computational immunology. She has longstanding experience in global gene expression analyses and supports the group with new programmed tools, R knowledge and by implementing new published methods. In her freetime, she likes hiking and watching good movies.
CLAUDIA FISCHER
PhD student
Claudia studied Molecular Medicine in Erlangen, not far from her Bavarian roots, before escaping to Switzerland altogether. In her master thesis, she investigated new approaches of protein engineering with immunotoxins and discovered her passion for immunotherapy through precision targeting. To further expand her knowledge, she started her PhD in our lab in Halle before moving to Basel. There she worked her way into the world of CAR T cells and would now love to find a therapeutic option for every target in existence. While protecting her cell lines from any damage at work, she likes to read and swim in her spare time or annoy her friends with endless movie trivia.
PAUL SCHMIDT-BARBO
PhD student
Paul joined the Binder Lab in 2023 and belongs to the new PhD kids on the block. He did his Master in cognitive science at the University of Tübingen with a focus on in ML and AI. So, he is here to bring in some fancy sounding words and tables with numbers marked in bold. He is the beneficiary of the hard work other do in the lab and loves to crunch some numbers with python. Although unexperienced with the deep waters of NGS data sets his studies have taught him how to survive in unknown waters. He is equipped him with a magic box containing statistic and machine learning tools to escape and hide from lacks of knowledge. However, not everything he does is smoke and mirrors.
During work you will find him in front of his notebook drinking coffee and listening to electronic music.
DENIS OWCZAREK
PhD student
Denis studied in Braunschweig with a research stay in Helsinki. During his studies he developed a fascination for antibodies and the beauty of their applications. In his master thesis he worked on establishing a novel diagnostic approach by coupling antibodies with magnetic nanoparticles. He then found joy working in the antibody discovery unit of a small start-up that produced antibodies animal free for the diagnostic market. He is now eager to translate all his accumulated experience from Phage-Display, Protein-Engineering and Protein-Protein-Interaction into the development of CARs against unique targets. When Denis is not in the lab, he is probably doing some kind of sport, from running to bouldering to cycling.
ADELINE STIEFVATER
Lab technician
Adeline has a Master´s degree in molecular biology from the University Basel. She has worked for many years as technician in the labs of Peter Scheiffele and Michael Sinnreich and joint our lab in 2023 in Basel. If not in the lab, Adeline spends time on the sea, gardens, cinema or is searching for a new motorcycle.
MORITZ ESCHER
MD student
Moritz is studying human medicine at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg and is currently working on the interaction of B-cell receptor signaling and driver mutations in B-cell lymphoma. After completing his studies, he would like to specialize in the field of hematology. In his spare time, he enjoys playing the piano, doing video and photo editing, playing boardgames and tinkering with his homeserver and networking-related topics. Prior to medical school, Moritz worked as a physiotherapist near Dresden, Germany.
Some of our most famous ALUMNI
LUISE CLAASS
Clinician Scientist
JULIANE GRIMM
Clinician Scientist
SVENJA HENKES
Master student
Luise was a Clinician Scientist in the lab until 2022. While carrying out clinical trials in the outpatient clinic, she also strived to find immunrepertoire characteristics and mutations in solid tumors predictive for treatment response. She now works at the University Hospital Jena.
Juliane was a Clinician Scientist in the lab until 2022. She identified distinct T cell metrics as potentail prognostic biomarkers for azacitidine responsiveness in AML patients. She now works as Postdoc in Britta Will´s group at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
Svenja was a master student in the lab in 2021. She solved the translational part of the INTEGA trial which addresses the efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade and its optimal combination partners in HER2+ esophagogastric adenocarcinoma (EGA). She now has an inudstry position.
DONJETE SIMNICA
Postdoc
Dona joined the Binder lab in 2017 as PhD student and left in December 2021 after one year as postdoc. Dona´s input was critical to guide the Binder lab into a post-Excel era and form our research profile regarding immune repertoires and clinical studies.
She will soon start as postdoc in Sebastian Kobold´s group at the LMU Munich focusing on experimental immunooncology.
LISA VON WENSERSKI
PhD student
Lisa performed her PhD thesis from 2017 to 2021. She did a great job showing that high expression levels of SLAMF1 and SLAMF7 withdraw Prohibitin-2 from the B cell receptor complex thus reducing its signaling. This mechanism may contribute to the favorable clinical course of CLL with high SLAMF expression. Lisa now works in a molecular diagnostics lab.
ALISSA BEHN
Alissa was a lab intern in 2021. During this time she effortlessly outcompeted the cloning efficiency of our postodocs.
Intern
REBEKKA SCHOLZ
Master student
MARTA SIEDLECKI
Lab technician
Marta was a technician in the lab from 2019-2020. She unfortunately decided to leave academia.
Rebekka was a Bachelor and Master student until 2020. She performed key experiments to characterize PD-L1 escape variants that emerged after Avelumab treatment in colorectal cancer.
She now works at the German Center of Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Bonn
JANINA SCHLÜTER
Lab wizard
Janina was a central lab member in Hamburg that managed everything from keeping up everybody's spirits to lab organization and eventually also PCR.
BARBARA GÖSCH
Lab technician
Barbara worked as a technician at the Hamburg lab with us. She had a wealth of experience in all kinds of techniques and moved our immune repertoire sequencing pipeline significantly forward.
ANITA SCHULENKORF
Lab technician
Anita was the good soul of our Hamburg lab. She new all techniques and contributed to the success of numerous bachelor, master and doctoral thesis by passing on her knowledge.
Joseph is a clinician scientist interested in solid tumor immunotherapy. At our Hamburg lab, he worked on resistance mechanisms of targeted EGFR therapies and how to overcome them with nanobodies.
He is now a physician at the Hematology/Oncology Departmant at the UKE and a member of Nicola Gagliani´s research group in Hamburg.
JOSEPH TINTELNOT
MD
NURAY AKYÜZ
Postdoc
Nuray was the first generation of scientists in our lab, that found herself in the middle of our transition from excel (that she mastered in a way that not many people do!!) to R. She is a scientist at the Hematology/Oncology Department at the UKE.
ANNA OBERLE
Postdoc
Anna did her PhD and her first Post-Doc at the Hamburg lab - always curious to detect even minimal traces of myeloma-specific DNA rearrangements in blood. An austrian scientist from the next-door lab hijacked her, transfered her to Vienna and transformed her northern accent to some very funny german-austrian hybrid tongue.
BENJAMIN THIELE
MD
Benni qualified for "excellent student" mentoring after his first months as a medical student. Ever since, he is a close friend of the Binder Lab. He managed to publish in Blood during his MD thesis (falsifying a long-standing hypothesis on myeloma precursor cells) and contributed a lot of crazy ideas to our projects.
NATALIE BAUM
PhD student
Nati began her PhD thesis at the Binder Lab and finished it in the Nolte Lab at the UKE. Despite the change of lab, she kept her original research question and the project on alternative ways of EGFR targeting became a trans-laboratory success!
FRIEDERIKE BRAIG
PhD student
Fritzi was the first PhD at the Binder Lab. She was a pioneer in everything she did and with her most unusual organizational skills, she created a famous system of highest work efficacy (the so-called Fritzi's Listen). She set the standard of >8 publications per PhD.