Ralf Schmidt, MD PhD
Group Leader
Medical University of Vienna,
Department of Laboratory Medicine, KILM
Anna Spiegel Research Building
Lazarettgasse 14, AKH BT25.2, Level 6
1090 Vienna, Austria
Ralf Schmidt studied medicine at the Medical University of Vienna from 2010 to 2016. During that time, he became a research fellow in immunology in Klaus Schmetterer's group at the Department of Laboratory Medicine. He obtained his MD in October 2016, subsequently joined the Department of Laboratory Medicine as a resident and continued his scientific journey in the PhD programme immunology. In 2019, Ralf became a postdoc in Alexander Marson's lab at UCSF and Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, where he developed high-throughput CRISPR screening platforms in primary human T cells. He returned to the Medical University of Vienna in 2023 where he's currently building a research group for advanced genome engineering in primary human T cells.
Know-how and research interest
We aim to advance and apply cutting-edge genome engineering in T cells to enhance our understanding of fundamental T cell functions and inform the design of next generation therapies. We have developed a suite of platforms for pooled CRISPR screening in primary human T cells (Schmidt and Steinhart et al., Science 2022; Blaeschke et al., Cell 2023; Schmidt and Ward et al., Nature 2024; Yan et al., Nature 2024) that can now help us answer the most challenging questions in T cell biology. We will keep pushing the limits of gene editing in T cells and use the technology to inform cell therapies against cancer.
Main research interest
- Advancing T cell genome engineering in T cells
- Enhancing availability and efficacy of T cell therapies by decoding T cell functions
- Developing high-throughput forward genetics platforms for T cells