Stephan Mielke

Stephan Mielke started as Professor of Hematology and Cell Therapy at Karolinska Institutet and Department Head and Scientific Director at the Cancer Center of Karolinska University Hospital in May 2017. He graduated in 1999 from Medical School and received his doctoral degree from Georg-August University in Göttingen. Trained in Internal Medicine, Hematology and Oncology at the University of Freiburg he was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, where he initaited clinical trials as a principle investigator and has since devoted his career to the development of advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMP) in cancer care. In 2007 he returned to Germany and became Director of the newly built Adult Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation Program and in 2014 Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Würzburg. He focused on graft manipulation in haplo-identical stem cell transplantation and initiated world-wide multicenter trials with ATMPs as coordinating investigator.

Mielke is one of Europe's pioneers in CAR T-cell therapy, being one of the first in Germany treating patients with CAR T-cells in 2016 as part of the JULIET trial (NEJM 2019) and was the first to perform CAR T cell therapy in 2019 at Karolinska as part of the TRANSFORM trial (Lancet 2022). He has performed Sweden's first standard of care CAR T cell treatment in 2019 and has recruited several international trials to Karolinska such as the TRANSCEND FOL study (Nature Med 2024). In close cooperation with the Phase I Unit the first solid tumor patients in the Nordics received gene-modified effector cells (TCR and CAR-T cells). Stephan Mielke has taken a leading role in the foundation of Karolinska Comprehensive Cancer Center (2020) as well as Karolinska ATMP Center, a cell and genetherapy center (2024). In 2019 he founded SWECARNET, Sweden’s CAR T cell network, a co-creational cooperation between academia, healthcare and industry to foster access to CAR T cell therapy for all patients in Sweden, serving today as an European role-model. 

Actual Positions:
Professor of Hematology and Cellular Therapy (LabMed, MedH)
Head of Department and Senior Physician at the Center of Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ME CAST, Tema Cancer).
Director of the Cellular Therapy and Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation Program (JACIE).
Member of Board of Directors of Karolinska Comprehensive Cancer Center (OECI) and Karolinska ATMP Center

Stephan Mielke, Professor of Hematology and Cell Therapy at Karolinska Institutet and Head of Department at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, is a translational physician-scientist with Swedish board certification in Internal Medicine and Hematology and a special interest in cell- and gene therapy. His research group is closely related to both the reseach laboratory as well as the Department of Cellular Therapy and Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation and focuses on efficient translation of innovation from bench-to-bedside as well as from bedside-to-bench: "We work translational and co-creational with the patient in the center to provide fast access to innovation" explains Stephan Mielke. A central aim of this research is to increase the rates of cure for patients with leukemia and MDS, lymphoma, myeloma and solid tumors by harnessing the benefits of autologous and allogeneic immunity and maintain quality of life. More recently the treatment of inborn errors, immune defects and autoimmune diseases with both transplantation as well as cell and gene therapy have gained more and more attention. Stephan Mielke has built a wide-spread national and international network, has received several grants, has pulished more than 130 papers and is regularly invited as a peer scientific reviewer for several international journals and funding organizations in the field of stem cell transplantation, cell and gene therapy as well as personalized medicine. He is regulary called in as international export and part of several European initiatives in the ATMP field such as JOIN4ATMP and the GoCART coalition.

Stephan Mielke, Professor of Hematology and Cell Therapy and Department Head of Cellular Therapy and Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation (CAST) at Karolinska Institutet and University Hospital in Stockholm, is an expierenced academic and clinical teacher who has started his teaching carrier already as a student at the University of Göttingen in 1992 and has devoted since extensive efforts into teaching, training and mentoring of medical students and other health-care and biomedical professionals for more than three decades. He likes interdiciplinary, interprofessional and cross-curricular teaching approaches to provide different perspectives to students and generate better system understanding. His teaching style is interactive and motivating, inviting everybody to participate and to challenge where needed. As an internationally recognized expert for the fields of cell- and gene therapy, personalized medicine and comprehensive cancer therapy he has delivered several invited educational lectures at international meetings over the years. He has been supervising several master students and doctaral candidates (Dr. med./PhD)