Detail

Keywords

Colorectal Neoplasms; Immune System; Immunotherapy; Tumor Microenvironment

Research interests

• Humanized mouse models for translational cancer research and immunotherapy
• Stromal regulation of immune cell development and anti-tumor immunity

Techniques, methods & infrastructure

• Next-generation humanized mouse models (MISTRG-6)
• Colorectal cancer patient-derived tumor xenograft (CRC-PDX) models
• Cancer immunotherapies
• Reporter and conditional knockout mouse models
• Spectral flow cytometry (Cytek Aurora)
• Multiplex immunohistochemistry

Grants

• Functional heterogeneity of mesenchymal stromal cells (2024)
  Source of Funding: FWF (Austrian Science Fund), Principal Investigator Project
  Principal Investigator
• Innate immune reprogramming to overcome therapy resistance in high-risk colorectal cancer (2021)
  Source of Funding: WWTF (Vienna Science and Technology Fund), Life Sciences / Precision Medicine
  Coordinator of the collaborative project
• Long noncoding RNA regulation of adaptive immunity (2020)
  Source of Funding: FWF (Austrian Science Fund), Principal Investigator Project
  Principal Investigator

Selected publications

1. Stecher, C. et al. (2025) ‘Heterogeneity of IL-15-expressing mesenchymal stromal cells controls natural killer cell development and immune cell homeostasis’, Nature Communications, 16(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-61231-0.
2. Herndler-Brandstetter, D. et al. (2018) ‘KLRG1+ Effector CD8+ T Cells Lose KLRG1, Differentiate into All Memory T Cell Lineages, and Convey Enhanced Protective Immunity’, Immunity, 48(4), pp. 716-729.e8. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2018.03.015.
3. Ring, N.G. et al. (2017) ‘Anti-SIRPα antibody immunotherapy enhances neutrophil and macrophage antitumor activity’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(49). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1710877114.
4. Chen, A., Neuwirth, I. and Herndler-Brandstetter, D. (2023) ‘Modeling the Tumor Microenvironment and Cancer Immunotherapy in Next-Generation Humanized Mice’, Cancers, 15(11), p. 2989. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cancers15112989.
5. Chen, A. et al. (2025) ‘Comparison of NSG-Quad and MISTRG-6 humanized mice for modeling circulating and tumor-infiltrating human myeloid cells’, Molecular Therapy Methods & Clinical Development, 33(2), p. 101487. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omtm.2025.101487.