Andreas Kaufmann holds a degree in Biology from the University of Heidelberg (1992). Dr. Kaufmann completed his PhD at the German Cancer Centre working on tumour metastasis and EGF receptor signalling. In 1994, he proceeded to Loyola University at Chicago to join the Lab of Lutz Gissmann and started working on Human Papillomavirus immunology and vaccine development. In 1997, he moved to Jena, Germany, and engaged in clinical testing of experimental vaccines and characterization of immune responses to HPV vaccination. Several clinical vaccination studies were performed. The research group moved to Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin by 2005. Andreas Kaufmann holds a position as head of research at the Department of Gynaecology. He is responsible for the development and organisation of the departmental research. This comprises acquisition and organisation of clinical studies with companies and academic translational basic research. The main interests are i) characterization of tumour-specific immune responses and development and evaluation of tumour vaccination strategies ii) epidemiology of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer and development and introduction of screening methods, iii) cancer stem cell biology and targeted treatment. Current interests are T cell immunology of HPV vaccination of both prophylactic and therapeutic approaches. Sensitive T cell assays have been developed and are validated for use in clinical studies. HPV testing is performed for diagnostic purposes on patients and subjects recruited into studies. HPV gene expression in correlation to disease progression is investigated to identify potential progression markers. In addition the biologic and immunologic features of cancer stem cells of HPV-related cervical and head-and-neck cancer are investigated. Several cervical cancer implementation trials in LMIC were supported by the lab. The emphasis is on translational research making innovative methods and therapies available to patients.
