Our Science – Rader Website

Christoph Rader, Ph.D.

Experimental Transplantation and Immunology Branch Head, Antibody Technology Section Senior Scientist 9000 Rockville Pike Building 10 CRC, Rooms 3-3150 (office) and 3-3248 (laboratory) Bethesda, MD 20892-1203 Phone:   301-451-2235 Fax:   301-480-4354 E-Mail:   raderc@mail.nih.gov

Biography

Dr. Rader studied biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Bayreuth (Germany) and at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) where he received his Ph.D. with honors in 1995. He pursued postdoctoral training with Dr. Carlos F. Barbas III at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla (California) to specialize in antibody engineering, phage display, and catalytic antibody technologies. Following his promotion to Assistant Professor at The Scripps Research Institute in 1999, he was the recipient of several grants, including the Investigator Award from the Cancer Research Institute in 2000 and an NIH R01 grant in 2002. He joined the Experimental Transplantation and Immunology Branch in 2003 with the objective to build and lead an independent laboratory dedicated to pioneering antibody drug and target discovery. In 2007, he received the NCI Director's Intramural Innovation Award for Principal Investigators. Dr. Rader is named inventor on nine issued or pending U.S. patents in the field of antibody engineering.

Research

Since 1997, nine monoclonal antibodies have been approved by the FDA for cancer therapy and many more are in advanced clinical trials. We are focused on contributing to the next generation of monoclonal antibodies designed to further increase antitumor activity while maintaining low toxicity. We hypothesize that this can be achieved through (i) the identification of cell surface antigens that mediate more selective targeting and more potent eradication of tumor cells, (ii) the utilization of antibody engineering technology to improve monoclonal antibodies in terms of activity, affinity, specificity, immunogenicity, stability, and delivery, and (iii) combinations of monoclonal antibodies with autologous and allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and adoptive cell therapy.

This page was last updated on 12/29/2008.