Dr. Stephan Steinke

Research interests

My passion is to combat autoimmune diseases with 21st-century biologicals. My research develops antibody- and protein-based strategies to identify, characterize and target disease-relevant epitopes, enabling novel diagnostic and therapeutic applications.

• Antibody & protein engineering (phage display, epitope mapping, in vitro evolution)
• Autoantibody characterisation 
• Autoimmune encephalitis
• Baitbody (Fc-fusion protein) development 
• CAAR-T cell development

• Targeted therapies and translational diagnostics

Curriculum vitae     

03/2026 – present      Group Leader & Cand. habil. at TU Braunschweig, Department of Medical Biotechnology, Germany,

01/2024 – 03/2026      Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Mayo Clinic Florida, Autoimmune Neurology Group, United States of America

08/2023 – 12/2023      Postdoctoral Research Fellow at TU Braunschweig, Department of Medical Biotechnology, Germany

01/2023 – 08/2023      Ph.D. student at TU Braunschweig, Department of Biotechnology, Germany, Ph.D. Thesis: “Engineering a high affine NMDAR-Fc (baitbody) fusion protein for autoantibody detection and elimination in NMDAR encephalitis”

10/2017 – 12/2019      Master of Science Biotechnology at TU Braunschweig, Germany, Master’s Thesis: “Generation and characterization of monoclonal antibodies against the allergens Ara h 1 and Bra j 1”

10/2014 – 10/2017      Bachelor of Science Biotechnology at TU Brausnchweig, Germany, Bachelor’s Thesis: “Investigation of phenazine biosynthesis in Burkholderia strains”

Awards

Award on the Aging Nervous System

Secured $200,000 in funding from the Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging for the research project “Cervical Lymph Node Compartmentalized Proteins and Immune Profiling in Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease”, under the supervision and direction of Prof. Dr. Sarosh Irani

Innovation Award of Lower Saxony

Category: Cooperation “Corona Antibody Team” under the direction of Prof. Dr. Michael Hust and Prof. Dr. Stefan Dübel

Publications

Book autorships

• (3) Steinke, S., Roth, K.D.R., Englick, R., Langreder, N., Ballmann, R., Fühner, V., Zilkens, K.J.K., Moreira, G.M.S.G., Koch, A., Russo, G., Schubert, M., Bertoglio, F., Heine, P.A. & Hust, M. (2023). Mapping Epitopes by Phage Display. Methods Molecular Biology 2702, 563-585

• (2) Steinke, S., Roth, K.D.R., Ruschig, Langreder, N., Polten, S., Schneider, K.-T., Ballmann, R., Russo, G., Zilkens, K.J.K., Schubert, M., Bertoglio, F. & Hust, M. (2023). Antibody Selection via Phage Display in Microtiter Plates. Methods Molecular Biology 2702, 247-260

• (1) Ruschig, M., Heine, P.A., Fühner, V., Zilkens, K.J.K., Steinke, S., Schubert, M., Bertoglio, F. & Hust, M. (2023). Construction of Human Immune and Naive scFv Phage Display Libraries. Methods Molecular Biology 2702, 15-37

Journal autorships

• (11) Wenzel, E.V., Al-Halabi-Frenzel, L., Demiral, S., Frenzel, A., Gnann, D.C., Keitel, M.C.E., Lehmler, N., Mukherjee, T., Raul, J., Schirrmann, T., Stańczyk, P.G., Steinke, S., Terbrack, J., Westerhoff, S., Dübel, S., Schubert, M., Hust, M. & Bertoglio, F. (accepted). The landscape of antibody production systems: Recombinant expression for research, diagnostic and therapy. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology 

• (10) Panicker, A. J., Hinman, S. S., Perreau, J., Aslanpour, A., Williams, R. L., Steinke, S., Quinn, E., Hernandez, A.L., Yandamuri, S. S., Irani, S. R., Longbrake, E. E. & O'Connor, K. C. (2026) Generation of Monoclonal Autoantibodies From Myelin Oligodendrocyte Glycoprotein-Specific Human B Cells Using an Optofluidic-Based Platform, Neurology, Neuroimmunology and Neuroinflammation, e200577-13-3

• (9) Gnann, D.C., Steinke, S., Garritsen, H.S.P. & Hust, M. (2026). Resolving the interference of anti-CD38 antibodies on blood compatibility assays using CD38 "baitbodies" approach. Journal of Immunology Research 2026:7343647

• (8) Chung, H.-Y., Wickel, J., Hahn, N., Mein, N., Schwarzbrunn, M., Koch, P., Ceanga, M., Haselmann, H., Baade-Büttner, C., von Stackelberg, N., Hempel, N., Schmidl, L., Groth, M., Andreas, N., Götze, J., Coldewey, S.M., Bauer, M., Mawrin, C., Dargbvainiene, J., Leypoldt, F., Steinke, S., Wang, Z.-Q., Hust, M. & Geis, C. (2023). Microglia mediate neurocognitive deficits by eliminating C1q tagged synapses in sepsis-associated encephalopathy. Science Advances 9: eabq780
• (7) Steinke, S., Kirmann, T., Loi, E.A., Nerlich, J., Weichard, I., Kuhn, P., Bullmann, T., Ritzau-Jost. A., Sila Rizalar, F., Prüss, H., Haucke, V., Geis, C., Hust, M. & Hallermann, S. (2023). NMDA-receptor-Fc-fusion constructs neutralize anti-NMDA receptor antibodies. Brain 146:1812-1820
• (6) Schubert, M., Bertoglio, F., Steinke, S., Heine, P.A., Ynga-Durand, M.A., Maass, H., Sammartino, J.C., Cassaniti, I., Zuo, F., Du, L., Korn, J., Milošević, M., Wenzel, E.V., Krstanović, F., Polten, S., Pribanić-Matešić, M., Brizić, I., Baldanti, F., Hammarström, L., Dübel, S., Šustić, A., Marcotte, H., Strengert, M., Protić, A., Piralla, A., Pan-Hammarström, Q., Čičin-Šain, L. & Hust, M. (2022). Human serum from SARS-CoV-2 vaccinated and COVID-19 patients shows reduced binding to the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. BMC Medicine 20:102
• (5) Assou, J, Zhang, D, Roth, K.D.R., Steinke, S., Hust, M., Reinard, T., Winkelmann, T. & Boch, J. (2022). Removing the major allergen Bra j I from brown mustard (Brassica juncea) by CRISPR/Cas9. The Plant Journal 109:649-663
• (4) Roth, K.D.R., Wenzel, E.V., Ruschig, M., Steinke, S., Langreder, N., Heine, P.A., Schneider, K.-T., Ballmann, R., Fühner, V., Kuhn, P., Schirmann, T., Frenzel, A., Dübel. S., Schubert, M., Moreira, G.M.S.M., Bertoglio, F., Russo, G. & Hust, M. (2021). Developing recombinant antibodies by phage display against infectious diseases and toxins for diagnostics and therapy. Frontiers Cellular and Infection Microbiology 11:697876
• (3) Hendry, S., Steinke, S., Wittstein, K., Stadler, M., Harmrolfs, K., Adewunmi, Y., ... & Mavrodi, D. (2021). Functional Analysis of Phenazine Biosynthesis Genes in Burkholderia spp. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 87(11), e02348-20.
• (2) Bertoglio, F., Meier, D., Langreder, N., Steinke, S., Rand, U., Simonelli, L., Heine, P. A., Ballmann, R., Schneider, K.-T., Roth, K. D. R., Ruschig, M., Riese, P., Eschke, K., Kim, Y., Schaeckermann, D., Pedotti, M., Kuhn, P., Zock-Emmenthal, S., Wöhrle, J., Becker, M., Grashoff, M., Wenzel, E. V., Russo, G., Kröger, A., Brunotte, L., Ludwig, S., Fühner, V., Krämer, S. D., Dübel, S., Varani, L., Roth, G., Cicin-Sain, L., Schubert, M., & Hust, M. (2021) SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing human recombinant antibodies selected from pre-pandemic healthy donors binding at RBD-ACE2 interface. Nature Communications 12:1577
• (1) Korn, J., Schäckermann, D., Kirmann, T., Bertoglio, F., Steinke, S., Heisig, J., Ruschig, M., Rojas, G., Langreder, N., Wenzel, E.V., Roth, K.D.R., Becker, M., Meier, D., van den Heuvel, J., Hust, M., Dübel, S. & Schubert, M. (2020). Baculovirus-free insect cell expression system for high yield antibody and antigen production. Scientific Reports 10: 21393