Dr. Christian Gieffers has strong expertise in preclinical development of immune-oncological therapeutics with a focus on antibodies and agonistic fusion proteins targeting the TNF receptor superfamily. He is co-founder of TriCos Biotherapeutics and the designated CEO. In his last position, Dr. Gieffers was accountable for all aspects of preclinical R&D activities as VP Preclinical Development at Apogenix AG, Heidelberg. This comprises in particular the preclinical development of new agonistic drug candidates but also includes the clinical analytical development of Asunercept (APG101) as well as biomarker discovery and diagnostic development. Prior to Apogenix Dr. Gieffers was heading the discovery and analytical development of peptide based vaccines at AFFiRis GmbH in Vienna. This includes the complete workflow of monoclonal antibody discovery to the implementation of phage-display based screening methods for the discovery of peptide-based vaccine-candidates.

Before his career in the biopharmaceutical development, Dr. Gieffers worked as a Post Doc at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) Vienna on biochemical and structural characterization of the Anaphase-Promoting Complex; - a multi-protein complex regulating the cell cycle. Christian studied Biology at the University of Bielefeld in Germany where he also obtained his PHD from the department of Biochemistry.