Stefan Dübel | Director
Technical University of Braunschweig

Stefan Dübel is Full Professor of Biotechnology and Director of the corresponding department at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany. After completing his PhD at the University of Heidelberg, he joined the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in 1989, where he pioneered in vitro antibody selection, leading to several important inventions, including antibody phage display (e.g. US Patent 6387627), human antibody libraries (e.g. US Patent 6319690) and antibody libraries with randomised CDRs (e.g. EP0440146B1). His lab continued to contribute to numerous innovations in human antibody development, phage display and in vitro evolution, e.g. hyperphage technology (2001), ORFeome display (2006) and targeted RNases for cancer therapy (1995/2008). Other achievements include the development of the first protein knockdown mouse using intrabodies (2014), and a universal allosteric switch module for antibody affinity (2017). His work has led to >280 publications and numerous patent applications. He is editor of the four-volume reference "Handbook of Therapeutic Antibodies" and other antibody engineering books. Two human antibodies developed in his academic lab by phage display achieved clinical use (against SARS-CoV-2 and metastatic cancer). He is co-founder of several biotech companies, including the animal-free antibody company Abcalis (abcalis.com) and Yumab (yumab.com), which specializes in the discovery and development of human therapeutic antibodies. He was also instrumental in founding the Corona Antibody Team and CORAT Therapeutics GmbH (corat-therapeutics.com), which developed a passive vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 for the direct treatment of COVID-19. He is CTO of Mabswitch Inc (mabswitch.com), a company that provides affinity-regulated antibodies to address the efficacy and toxicity issues of immunotherapies.