Leo Scheller

Looking for a theory partner for an #HFSP project? #morphogenesis in cells and tissues, #chemotaxis, #cilia? Feel free to reach out! Deadline for letters of intent 26.03.2026.
physics-of-life.tu-dresden.de/team/pol-gro...

Schematische Darstellung eines DROP-CAR - Copyright Leo Scheller

Wirkstoff-gesteuerte CAR-T-Zellen: Ein neuer Sicherheitsmechanismus für die Krebsimmuntherapie
Die chimäre Antigenrezeptor-(CAR)-T-Zelltherapie basiert auf gentechnisch veränderten Immunzellen, die Krebszellen aufspüren und zerstören. Manch...
weiterlesen

We are looking for RNA enthusiasts to join us at the @uniregensburg.bsky.social as a junior group leader! Our university offer excellent infrastructure and collaboration opportunities for ground breaking RNA research. Please RT @jrrnascientists.bsky.social @rnasociety.bsky.social

- Can we find a venetoclax dosing regimen for optimal efficacy/safety? Intermittent shutoff vs. continuous low dose? Could this improve exhaustion/killing efficacy? Could this help to "let go" of dead cancer cells? Could this improve tumor penetration?
- ...

Happy to discuss 😄

There are many open questions and possible follow-up projects:
- Which tumor type and antigen are most suitable for this system?
- Can (and should) we further optimize DROP-CAR expression?
- Can we combine the DROP-CAR with armored CAR strategies, including TRUCK?

Drug-controlled CAR T cells through the regulation of cell–cell interactions - Nature Chemical Biology Drug-controlled DROP-CARs enable reversible extracellular control of CAR T cell function via human-derived protein switches that modulate cell–cell interactions and support dual-antigen targeting as w...

The core idea of this project was that we wanted a new CAR safety switch that works with minimally altered human proteins, an approved drug, and by breaking or inhibiting cell-cell contact. After a lot of optimization, this worked pretty well!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...

Ooooh. Cool new paper on origins of life. A simple 45-nucleotide RNA molecule that can perfectly copy itself.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We’re excited to announce the opening of the Geneva Expansion Microscopy Facility (GenExM)!

GenExM is a full-service U-ExM platform (U-ExM, Cryo-ExM, iU-ExM), delivering nanoscale imaging.

Led by Dr. Olivier Mercey, GenExM welcomes academic & industrial collaborations.

👉 www.unige.ch/genexm/

Tenure Track Professorship (W1 with Tenure Track to W3) in “Molecular Biology" (f/m/d) - Heidelberg job with Universität Heidelberg | 12850668 The Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University (ZMBH) and the Faculty of Biosciences invite applications for a   Tenure Track Professors...

We are recruiting a tenure track professor in the broader area of molecular biology @zmbh.uni-heidelberg.de at Heidelberg University! www.nature.com/naturecareer... Please share and apply!

Cool work to design phospho-tyrosine binder by the Baker lab. They show it works but success rate is low (<0.1%) and binders are not super strong (>500nM, likely related to cost of desolvating the phosphate) .
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

De-novo design of a random protein walker Molecular machines hold great potential. Design of static monomeric and oligomeric protein structures has advanced tremendously, but few dynamic protein systems have been designed. Here we present the...

A computationally-designed ‘random walker’ protein with tiny feet can walk back and forth across a micrometer-long fiber

share.google/3gzWosAVOeAh...

One-shot design of functional protein binders with BindCraft - Nature BindCraft, an open-source, automated pipeline for de novo protein binder design with experimental success rates of 10–100%, leverages AlphaFold2 weights to generate binders with nanomolar affinity without the need for high-throughput screening.

Nature research paper: One-shot design of functional protein binders with BindCraft

go.nature.com/46bhOAv

Exciting to see our protein binder design pipeline BindCraft published in its final form in @Nature ! This has been an amazing collaborative effort with Lennart, Christian, @sokrypton.org, Bruno and many other amazing lab members and collaborators.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am super excited to announce that I will be starting my lab at the Department of Pharmacology of the University of Zurich in Switzerland next year!

Watch out, one of the best in the field! 😀

Molecular basis for anti-jumbo phage immunity by AVAST Type 5 Jumbo phages protect their genomes from DNA-sensing bacterial defense systems by enclosing them within vesicles and nucleus-like compartments. Very little is known about defense systems specialized to...

We (meaning Aswin and Stan www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) found this jumbophage protein homologue of PhiKZ_124 that activates Avast5 and we solved a 2.1A cryoEM structure of but we have no idea what it does. Let me know it you got some idea. www.rcsb.org/structure/9RP3

My highest recommendation! Working with Martin is the ideal entry point into protein design.

Humanized Caffeine-Inducible Systems for Controlling Cellular Functions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.13.659463v1

Caffeine-regulated molecular switches for functional control of CAR T cells in vivo https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.13.659487v1

Development of AI-designed protein binders for detection and targeting of cancer cell surface proteins Artificial intelligence (AI)-based protein design opens new avenues for the rapid generation of new research tools and therapeutics, but experimental validation lags behind the computational design th...

Happy to share our first foray into the world of AI-based #ProteinDesign. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

THIS IS HUGE! TWO Phase I HIV vaccine clinical trials have demonstrated that a stepwise mRNA-based vaccination strategy can SUCCESSFULLY activate AND advance immune responses toward producing broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs), a CRITICAL milestone in HIV prevention. Let’s talk about that! 🧪🧵⬇️

Adapting ProteinMPNN for antibody design without retraining The neural network ProteinMPNN designs protein sequences capable of folding into predefined tertiary structures and quaternary assemblies. It has become widely used due to its high success rates when ...

"Adapting ProteinMPNN for antibody design without retraining"

Our several-years-old fix to ProteinMPNN's tendency to make weird antibody CDR sequences is finally preprinted

a cat is sitting in front of a laptop computer asking for advice ALT: a cat is sitting in front of a laptop computer asking for advice

Hi everyone! I’m a #NewPI just starting my lab and would love to hear your advice on lab management and building the lab culture. Any tips, lessons learned, or resources you’ve found helpful are very welcome! Feel free to reply, message me, or email me at rcastellsg(at)cnio.es
thanks a lot!! 🤗

Bonsai: Tree representations for distortion-free visualization and exploratory analysis of single-cell omics data Single-cell omics methods promise to revolutionize our understanding of gene regulatory processes during cell differentiation, but analysis of such data continues to pose a major challenge. Apart from...

Here it is! Bonsai. Now there is really no more excuse for using t-SNE/UMAP. Bonsai not only makes cool pictures of your data. It actually rigorously preserves its structure. No tunable parameters. Incredible work by @dhdegroot.bsky.social.
I'm so excited about this!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Modular Engineering of Thermo-Responsive Allosteric Proteins Thermogenetics enables non-invasive spatiotemporal control over protein activity in living cells and tissues, yet its applications have largely been restricted to transcriptional regulation and membra...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

If u ever had to depict proteins as schematics in papers, u know the dilemma: how to create a pretty “blob”?
If structure ends up big & central, u’ll render it with PyMol et al, but for a truly schematic depiction u want a biorender-style icon, but for YOUR protein.
Think I’ve finally found a way.

Programmable protein stabilization with language model-derived peptide guides - Nature Communications Dysregulated protein degradation drives diseases like cancer. Here, authors use protein language models to design target-binding peptides, which are subsequently attached to the catalytic domain of th...

Programmable protein stabilization with language model-derived peptide guides

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

You’ve heard of vibe coding—meet vibe protein design. Click, launch, and watch the binders roll in. That’s what we're unveiling with @ariaxbio.bsky.social today.

AFESM: a metagenomic guide through the protein structure universe! We clustered 821M structures (AFDB&ESMatlas) into 5.12M groups; revealing biome-specific groups, only 1 new fold even after AlphaFold2 re-prediction & many novel domain combos. 🧵
🌐 afesm.foldseek.com
📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Baker lab PyMOL config 👇