Georg Schett, the German scientist who spent five years demonstrating that CAR-T therapy, a treatment that engineers a patient's own immune cells to target and eliminate the source of disease, can reset the immune system in autoimmune patients, is co-founding his first biotech company. The new company plans to work with antibody therapies and has no immediate plans to pursue CAR-T, the area where Schett built his standing.
How Schett got here
Over the last five years, Schett's work in autoimmune disease attracted steady attention from industry. He became a scientific adviser across roughly half a dozen startups, the sort of expert whose name companies in the space felt they needed on their advisory boards. That advisory role is common for prominent academic scientists who attract attention but stop short of operational commitment.
Co-founding is different. An adviser offers expertise and a credible name. A co-founder bears responsibility for the company's direction and takes on the risk of execution. This is Schett's first time in that position.
CAR-T, the approach he is setting aside
CAR-T therapy works by extracting a patient's T cells, reprogramming them in a laboratory to recognize and attack a specific disease driver, and reinfusing them into the patient. Each treatment is built for one person. That personalization is what makes CAR-T effective in certain conditions and also what makes it expensive and logistically complex to deliver.
Schett's research showed this method could work in autoimmune disease, where the immune system turns against the body's own healthy tissue. That finding gave him the reputation that followed. His new company is choosing not to build on it.
What the company is building instead
The company's plans center on antibody therapies. Antibodies are proteins the immune system produces naturally to recognize and neutralize threats; engineered versions can be designed to bind to specific molecular targets and alter immune behavior. They can be manufactured at scale without starting from a single patient's cells, which removes a logistical layer that CAR-T cannot avoid.
The source does not identify which targets the company is pursuing, what development stage the programs have reached, or how the company is funded. Schett's first co-founding role is built around antibody therapies, the method he chose over the CAR-T work that made his name.