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Our Science – Rader Website

Christoph Rader, Ph.D.

Portait Photo of Christoph Rader
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. Christoph 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 for work on immunoglobulin superfamily molecules with Dr. Peter Sonderegger. He subsequently pursued postdoctoral training with Dr. Carlos F. Barbas III at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla (California), specializing 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. During this time, he also established the concept of chemical programming of monoclonal antibodies with Drs. Subhash C. Sinha, Richard A. Lerner, and Carlos F. Barbas III. Thus far, this technology has brought four conceptually new antibody drugs into clinical trials. Dr. Rader joined the National Cancer Institute 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 for a novel chemical programming concept that utilizes the 21st amino acid selenocysteine. Dr. Rader is named inventor on ten issued or pending U.S. patents in the field of antibody engineering.

Research

Since 1997, ten monoclonal antibodies have been approved by the FDA for cancer therapy and many more are in advanced clinical trials. To contribute to the next generation of monoclonal antibodies for cancer therapy in general and B-cell malignancies in particular, the Rader laboratory pursues (i) the identification of cell surface antigens that mediate more selective targeting and more potent eradication of tumor cells and (ii) the utilization of antibody engineering technology to improve monoclonal antibodies in terms of activity, affinity, specificity, immunogenicity, stability, and delivery.

This page was last updated on 1/8/2010.