Robert Zeiser is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of Tumour Immunology at the Department of Hematology, Oncology, and Stem-Cell Transplantation at the Medical Center-University of Freiburg, Germany.

He is Director of the Collaborative Research Center SFB 1479 that investigates oncogene driven immune escape mechanisms. In the last decade, he has translated multiple therapeutic approaches from mouse model to clinical application in graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) and leukemia immunotherapy. Together with a team of researchers, he translated the finding that ruxolitinib is highly effective against GvHD in mice (Blood 2014) to two new FDA-approved therapies for patients with acute GvHD (aGvHD; NEJM 2020) and chronic GvHD (NEJM 2021). Professor Zeiser’s lab also discovered that GLP-2 leads to intestinal regeneration during aGVHD (Blood 2020). This concept was then translated into a clinical trial for patients with intestinal GvHD (NCT05415410). In earlier work, Professor Zieser’s lab characterized the role of danger signals and neutrophils in GvHD, which was reported in Nature Medicine. His lab is currently pursuing projects that delineate the connection between oncogenic signaling and immune escape of leukemia.

In 2023, Professor Zieser received an ERC advanced grant – the most prestigious and competitive funding scheme for researchers in Europe and, in 2021, he received the German Cancer Award – the highest Award for Cancer Research in Germany.