ABOUT US


Cherry biolabs was founded in 2019 as a Spin-off from the University Hospital of Würzburg with a focus on biotechnology and immunotherapy target validation.

 

The essence of the technology is a T-cell engaging molecule that is split into two complementary fragments coined Hemibodies. Individual Hemibodies are inert but reconstitute T-cell engaging functions, in vivo, after binding to an antigen combination uniquely expressed on cancer cells. Hemibodies address cancer types that are not druggable by competing immunotherapy strategies, including bi-specific antibodies and CAR-T-cell formats, and avoid toxic side effects.  

TEAM


Prof. Gernot Stuhler, MD

Founder

Gernot is the inventor of the hemibody technology and Managing Director.

Gernot is a hematologist/oncologist with a strong background in allogeneic stem cell transplantation.

He was trained in Immunology at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biology/Immunogenetics in Tübingen/Germany and at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School in Boston/USA. During his time at Würzburg University, where bispecific T cell engagers were clinically developed, he got involved in antibody engineering. Currently, he is heading a group of scientists aiming to improve T cell engaging antibody derivatives and to implement combinatorial immunotargeting strategies.


Prof. Dr. med. Dres. h.c. Gert Riethmüller

Vice President

Emeritus Institut für Immunologie der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Germany)

Founder of Micromet GmbH, Munich (Germany).

Member and Chair of Board of Directors, Micromet Inc. Bethesda, Md, U.S.A., NASDAQ Code: MITI


Thomas Bumm, MD

Founder

Thomas studied medicine, starting in 1996, at the Universities of Budapest (Hungary), Dresden (Germany) and Leipzig (Germany) and graduated in 2003. After graduating medical school, he worked for 5 years as a post doc in the laboratory of Brian Druker and Michal Deininger at the Department for hematologic malignancies at the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), Portland Oregon (USA). In 2009 he moved back to Germany and worked as a Resident at the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at the University Hospital Würzburg (Germany). He joined the hemibody group with Gernot Stuhler in 2012 and is the research group leader for T-cell recruiting antibodies in Würzburg. 


Heinz Schwer

PhD, MBA

Heinz is the strategic advisor and responsible for venture building and business development.

Heinz studied Chemistry in Regensburg and earned his PhD in Clinical Chemistry from the University Hospital. He was a postdoc at the Harvard Institute of Medicine and the Dana-Farber-Cancer Institute in Boston and holds a master’s degree in Business Administration from Henley Management School. Heinz has a strong background in transactions covering mergers and acquisitions, licensing, fund raising and both scientific and business collaborations. He has more than 20 years of operational experience as a founder and CEO of various biotech companies developing antibodies, peptides, oncolytic viruses and platform technologies. Currently, he is a General partner at EMBL Ventures with a focus on venture building.


Martin Bumm

Martin is responsible for operational tasks and developing a creative and inspiring corporate culture. 

Martin studied business administration at the Universities of Passau (Germany), Lund (Sweden) and Mannheim (Germany). He has more than 14 years of experience as a banker with an investment focus on the e-health market and vast knowledge in founding a start-up and its leadership right through to market breakthrough.



AWARDS


The „Hemibody research group“ has won in the last six years a variety of awards and funding projects that have made the current successful developments possible.

2016  

 

 

 

      

2014      

  

2014    

   

2013       

GO-Bio Start-up offensive biotechnology from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research „Complementing Hemibodies for the individualized immunotherapy of malignant diseases “

 

Stage I business plan competition Northern Bavaria

 

Innovation Award of the Bio Regions of Germany

 

m4 Award, „Pre-Seed Competition of the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy: „Novel bi-molecular T-cell activating antibodies for targeted combinatorial tumor immunotherapy”