Science / July 31, 2026

The path of new immunotherapies to the clinic

Bringing a new CAR‑T cell therapy from promising results in the lab to critically ill cancer patients is anything but straightforward. A Tagesspiegel podcast featuring, among others, Armin Rehm explores the hurdles that must be overcome along the way and why the process is often faster in the United States.

The two-hour conversation with experts — including cancer researcher Dr. Armin Rehm of the Max Delbrück Center, Professor Lars Bullinger, Head of Tumor Immunology at Charité, and Dr. Anne Kerber, Senior Vice President and Head of Development for Hematology, Oncology, and Cell Therapy at the U.S. pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb — concludes the series “Cancer research: How ideas become life-saving therapies.”

The twelve-part series is a joint project of the Health & Science section of the Tagesspiegel (Sascha Karberg and Alexander Schlichter) and the Department of Hematology, Oncology, and Tumor Immunology at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Lars Bullinger). It was funded by Stiftung Charité as a “science x media Tandem.”

The journalists show how an idea in the lab can eventually become a new treatment in the clinic, using the example of new cancer immunotherapies being developed in Berlin at the Charité and the Max Delbrück Center. And they highlight the different perspectives: the hard work in the lab that lays the groundwork, the motivation of the doctors, the hope of the patients, and the system that sets the rules leading up to market approval.