Petros Christopoulos, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Medicine at Heidelberg University
Petros Christopoulos is Professor of Medicine at Heidelberg University, Hematologist & Medical Oncologist in the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg, Head of Scientific Coordination for the Thoracic Oncology Program in the Thoraxklinik at Heidelberg University Hospital, and Principal Investigator in the Translational Lung Research Center Heidelberg, member of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL). He is responsible for several clinical and translational research studies, as well as for the weekly thoracic molecular tumor board and subsequent treatment of patients with thoracic malignancies using novel compounds off-label or within expanded access programs.
After studying medicine in the University of Athens, Greece, he completed his training in Internal Medicine, Emergency
Medicine, Hematology, Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, Medical Oncology, Genetic Counseling, and Palliative Care in the University Hospitals of Freiburg and Würzburg in Germany. A major focus of his research lies in the systematic integration of clinical with genetic, pathologic, immunologic, and radiologic data to refine patient stratification, improve disease monitoring and identify novel therapeutic targets, which are subsequently translated into advanced preclinical models and investigator-initiated phase 2 clinical trials.
The power of this approach was demonstrated in a pivotal work connecting the NCT, Institute of Pathology Heidelberg and German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), which defined molecular risk in ALK-rearranged non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) utilizing deeply annotated patient cohorts alongside genetically modified mice, and now employs state-of-the-art longitudinal profiling to improve patient management within the prospective multicenter ABP study (NCT04318938). Similar strategies are currently applied to dissect other entities as well, for example analyze EGFR exon 20 insertion-driven or immunotherapy-treated lung cancers. A second main field is the characterization of systemic immune dysregulation associated with thoracic malignancies. Multicolor flow cytometry, gene expression and T-cell receptor (TCR)-profiling, proteomic and T-cell functional assays are being established and applied in combination to improve understanding of tumor immunology, immunotherapeutic efficacy, and the development of immune-related toxicities, while an important subproject explores thymoma-associated immunodeficiency.
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