When Dr. Thomas Neesselhut began studying tumor immunology in Germany in the late 1980s, the field was still considered fringe. Cancer care was dominated by surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, and the idea that the immune system could be trained to recognize tumors sounded more like a scientific curiosity than a clinical pathway. Yet Neesselhut stayed with it. He built one of the early tumor immunology labs, long before “immunotherapy” became a household word, and spent decades refining techniques that most of the medical world wasn’t ready to adopt.
The turning point didn’t come quickly. For years, dendritic cells were a niche topic discussed mostly in research circles. But Neesselhut kept working on them – not because they were fashionable, but because the biology made sense. Dendritic cells are the body’s strategic communicators, they decide what the immune system should attack and what it should ignore. If they could be trained to recognize cancer, he believed, they could change the trajectory of treatment for patients who had run out of options.
Today, with autologous cancer vaccines and cell-based immunotherapies going mainstream around the world, Neesselhut’s work seems less like a gamble and more like early foresight. His DCT clinic in Germany is still small, specialized and highly focused, having refined decades of experimentation into a repeatable therapeutic approach. With the global demand for customized immunotherapy on the rise, the key question is not if dendritic cell therapy works but how innovations like his can reach patients far beyond Germany.
Fireside Chat: The Early Years
Q: What made you believe in dendritic cells when almost no one did?
A: It wasn’t a big theory at the beginning, it was more a feeling that the immune system was giving us some information that we were not yet listening to. The first time I worked with dendritic cells I was impressed by how decisive they are. They weren’t just another immune cell. They were the ones making the decisions. They were the ones dictating the whole response. Even in simple lab experiments, it was clear how quickly other cells responded after the dendritic cells “spoke.”
My colleagues mostly thought them interesting but not clinically relevant. But a part of me kept thinking, if these cells decide what the immune system attacks, then training them to recognize cancer isn’t such a crazy idea. It is a natural extension of their job. I never lost that feeling. It wasn’t fashionable; it wasn’t easy, but it felt honest- this underlying biology. So, I kept going even when the field around me was not ready.
The Science Explained Simply
Q: People call dendritic cells the “generals” of the immune system. Why?
A: The term isn’t scientific, but it’s accurate enough. Dendritic cells are the ones that decide what the immune system should respond to. They collect information – pieces of proteins, signals from damaged tissue – and then present that information to T‑cells. And T‑cells act only after that presentation.
So if you look at the sequence, dendritic cells are the starting point. They set the direction. Without them, the immune system has strength but no clear target. That’s why people use the “general” analogy. They don’t fight themselves, but they decide where the fight is going.
Q: How does DCT actually work?
A: We take a small number of dendritic cells from the patient’s blood. In the lab, we show these cells what the patient’s tumor looks like – we give them that “sample” directly. Once they’ve processed it, we return the dendritic cells to the patient.
In the body, they hand this information to T-cells. And T-cells start to get a better look at the tumor and attack it more reliably. That’s the whole point: we’re giving the immune system information it didn’t have or couldn’t process on its own.
The Data Era – When the World Finally Caught Up
Q: At what point did the field start to catch up with the work you had been doing for years?
A: It happened gradually. Cell-based therapies have long been considered experimental, to be used in research programs and not in clinics. But over the last decade, data changed the conversation.
One obvious change came from the regulatory agencies. According to the FDA’s Cellular and Gene Therapy Annual Report, the number of approved cell-based therapies has increased by about 35% from 2018 to 2023. That kind of growth forces the field to pay attention.
Another signal came from patients themselves. Based on the reports of 2024, the global autologous cancer vaccine market grew by approximately 22% in 2 years. People began to look actively for therapies based on their immune system, not just on systemic drugs.
And the clinical results improved. Response rates have been in the 15–25% range with dendritic‐cell‐based therapies in advanced solid tumors in studies from Clinical Cancer Research. They’re not miracle numbers, but they’re meaningful – especially for patients who have exhausted standard options.
So the field didn’t suddenly “discover” dendritic cells. It simply reached a point where the evidence was strong enough that the work we had been doing for decades became part of a broader movement.
Our DCT Clinic in Germany – The Boutique Innovation Model
Q: Why did you choose a small, hands‑on model for your DCT clinic?
A: Because the therapy doesn’t work well any other way. Dendritic cell treatment is not a procedure you can run on a production line. Every patient’s cells behave a little differently, and the way we prepare them matters. In our DCT clinic in Germany steps are manual – from isolating the cells to exposing them to the patient’s tumor material – and small details change the outcome.
A larger clinic would mean we’d have to standardize things in the process that shouldn’t be standardized. It would mean more automation, more distance between the lab and the patient, and less control over each individual preparation. That’s not the right direction for this kind of therapy.
Keeping the clinic small allows us to stay close to the work. We know exactly what happens with each patient’s cells, and we can modify the process if necessary. It’s not about being exclusive; it’s about being accurate. The scale has to be appropriate for the therapy.
The Global Problem: Innovation Without Visibility
Q: If the therapy works, why isn’t it everywhere?
A: Because treatments like this don’t spread on their own. Dendritic cell therapy is not a drug you can manufacture in large batches and ship worldwide. It’s a process – and a very manual one. Every patient’s cells are prepared individually, and the quality depends on the people doing the work, not on a machine.
That makes it hard for clinics to grow. You can’t open ten centers overnight or train hundreds of technicians in a few months. And many of the clinics that developed these methods started as small research groups, not commercial enterprises. They focused on the science, not on visibility.
So even when the therapy shows results, it stays local. Patients abroad often don’t know these clinics exist, and the clinics don’t have the infrastructure to reach them. The innovation is there – but the pathway to the outside world is limited.
The Airomedical Partnership – Scaling the Invisible
Q: Why partner with a global healthcare platform?
A: Because a small clinic can’t reach the world on its own. We work with a therapy that is precise, manual, and built around individual patients – but that also means we don’t have the infrastructure to communicate with people outside Germany. For years, most of our patients came through word of mouth or personal referrals. That’s not enough when people in the U.S., the Middle East, or Asia are actively searching for options we can provide.
A global healthcare platform changes that. It provides visibility to clinics that don’t have marketing teams or international departments. The Airomedical platform helps patients to understand what we do, how the therapy works and if it is right for them. They do the part we can’t do. The logistics, the communication, the bridge between local innovation and global demand.
For us, the partnership isn’t about scale in the commercial sense. It’s about access. If a therapy shows promise, it shouldn’t stay hidden simply because the clinic is small. Airomedical makes it possible for patients around the world to find us – and to reach treatments that would otherwise remain out of sight.
Closing Narrative – The Long View
Q: What keeps you working in this field after so many years?
A: I’ve learned that real progress in medicine takes time. Not months – decades. Most of the work happens quietly: you try something, you adjust it, you watch how patients respond, you change one small detail and see if it matters. There’s nothing glamorous about it, and it rarely makes headlines.
Dendritic cell therapy grew exactly this way. No big moment, no sudden breakthrough – just steady work over many years. And when you finally see a patient benefit from something you’ve been refining for half your career, it reminds you why you started in the first place.
So I stay with it. Not because it’s new or exciting, but because it keeps moving forward, slowly and honestly. And in medicine, that’s often how the important things happen.
Sources referenced:
- FDA Cellular & Gene Therapy Annual Report, 2023.
- Kozina J. & Dr. Volvak Anton. Dendritic Cell Cancer Therapy Guide. Airomedical. 2025.
- Clinical Cancer Research, DC‑based therapy outcomes, 2022.
- Dr. Ahmed & Dr. Volvak Marta. Dendritic Cell Therapy for Breast Cancer in Germany. Airomedical. 2026.
- Global Autologous Cancer Vaccine Market Analysis, 2024.
- Practice Group for Cell Therapy Duderstadt – Airomedical clinic profile.
- Dr. rer. nat. Thomas Nesselhut, PhD – Airomedical doctor profile.