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Julia Frede - Systems Immune Oncology
Research Focus
Immunotherapies, which harness the patient’s own immune system to target cancer cells, have transformed cancer treatment. However, only a subset of patients achieves durable responses, and resistance remains a major clinical challenge. A key goal in translational cancer research is therefore to understand which patients benefit from immunotherapy and how therapeutic efficacy can be extended to a broader population. The Systems Immune Oncology group investigates how dynamic changes in cellular states of tumor and immune cells shape response and resistance to therapy. We combine multi-modal single-cell and spatial profiling approaches, including transcriptomics, epigenomics, and protein-level measurements, with computational modeling to dissect tumor–immune interactions at high resolution.
Our work focuses on identifying cellular programs and microenvironmental signals that drive immune evasion and therapy resistance. By integrating patient-derived samples with experimental model systems, we aim to link molecular mechanisms to clinically relevant phenotypes and treatment outcomes. In particular, we study how immune cell states are reprogrammed during immunotherapy and how these changes can be leveraged to improve therapeutic responses. By bridging systems biology with translational oncology, our goal is to develop predictive biomarkers and to uncover actionable vulnerabilities that enable more precise and durable cancer therapies across hematologic and solid malignancies.
Julia Frede studied Molecular Cell Biology in Heidelberg and completed her PhD in Oncology at the University of Cambridge, where she investigated lineage tracing and clonal dynamics in esophageal cancer. She subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, focusing on therapy resistance and immune evasion in multiple myeloma using single-cell multi-omics approaches. She joined LMU Munich/DKTK as a Junior Group Leader before taking up her current position as Tenure-Track Professor for Systems Immune Oncology at the Technical University of Munich, where she leads a research group at TranslaTUM.
- International Myeloma Foundation Brian D. Novis Junior Research Grant (2023)
- EHA-EMBL/EBI Computational Biology Training in Hematology Award (2023)
- AACR-Amgen Fellowship in Clinical/Translational Cancer Research (2019–2021)
- ASH Abstract Achievement Award (2019)
- DFG Research Fellowship (2017–2019)
Frede J*#, Poller JC*, Shi K, Stuart H, Sotudeh N, Havig C, Lim K, Wiggers CRM, Cho EY, Vijaykumar T, Liu J, Waldschmidt JM, Nair MS, Anand P, Dimitrova V, Montanaro A, Yee AJ, Munshi NC, Anderson KC, Martin N, Kaiser SM, Raab MS, Raje NS, Knoechel B#, Lohr JG#. The endogenous T cell landscape is reshaped by CAR-T cell therapy and predicts treatment response in multiple myeloma. Leukemia. 2025 Dec;39(12):3004-3014.
Wiggers CRM, Cho EY, Ozdemir M, Bamgbose G, Hegel J, Frede J, Warlitz F, Heavican-Foral TB, Pop I, Shraim R, Pölönen P, Koch V, Tran TH, Mullighan CG, Teachey DT, Bledsoe JR, Pikman Y, Harris MH, Place AE, Silverman LB, Lohr JG, Knoechel B. Remodeling of the immune microenvironment is linked to adverse outcome in pediatric T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Nat Commun. 2025 Nov 21;16(1):10263.
Waldschmidt JM, Sotudeh N, Arora S, Vijaykumar T, Anand P, Stuart H, Frede J, Campbell T, Kaiser SM, Zheng X, Munshi NC, Anderson KC, Einsele H, Yee AJ, Knoechel B, Lohr JG, Raje NS. Nivolumab to restore T-cell fitness in CAR-T refractory multiple myeloma. Blood Adv. 2025 Mar 11;9(5):1132-1136.
Hernandez-Lopez P, Vijaykumar T, Anand P, Auclair D, Frede J#, Knoechel B#, Lohr JG#. Dual role of signaling pathways in myeloma requires cell type–specific targeting of ligand-receptor interactions. Blood Adv. 2024 Jun 25;8(12):3173-3185.
Li L, Mohanty V, Dou J, Huang Y, Banerjee PP, Miao Q, Lohr JG, Vijaykumar T, Frede J, Knoechel B, Muniz-Feliciano L, Laskowski TJ, Liang S, Moyes JS, Nandivada V, Basar R, Kaplan M, Daher M, Liu E, Li Y, Acharya S, Lin P, Shanley M, Rafei H, Marin D, Mielke S, Champlin RE, Shpall EJ, Chen K, Rezvani K. Loss of metabolic fitness drives tumor resistance after CAR-NK cell therapy and can be overcome by cytokine engineering. Sci Adv. 2023 Jul 28;9(30):eadd6997.
Waldschmidt JM, Kloeber JA, Anand P, Frede J, Kokkalis A, Dimitrova V, Potdar S, Nair MS, Vijaykumar T, Im NG, Guillaumet-Adkins A, Guo G, Yee AJ, Laubach JP, Richardson PG, Anderson KC, Raje NS, Knoechel B, Lohr JG. Single-Cell Profiling Reveals Metabolic Reprogramming as a Resistance Mechanism in BRAF-Mutated Multiple Myeloma. Clin Cancer Res. 2021 Dec 1;27(23):6432-6444.
Frede J, Anand P, Sotudeh N, Pinto RA, Nair MS, Stuart H, Yee AJ, Vijaykumar T, Waldschmidt JM, Potdar S, Kloeber JA, Kokkalis A, Dimitrova V, Mann M, Laubach JP, Richardson PG, Anderson KC, Raje NS, Knoechel B, Lohr JG. Dynamic transcriptional reprogramming leads to immunotherapeutic vulnerabilities in myeloma. Nat Cell Biol. 2021 Nov;23(11):1199-1211.
Prof. Dr. Julia Frede
Technical University of Munich
School of Medicine
Institute for Clinical Chemistry and Pathobiochemistry
Phone: +49 89 4140 9118
E-Mail