Kirstin Anja Zettlitz PhD

Kirstin Anja Zettlitz, Ph.D., is assistant research professor in the Department for Immunology & Theranostics, Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope. She also is a visiting scientist at the Department for Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

Zettlitz's research interest focuses on antibody engineering and antibody-based theranostics for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases. This includes the radioactive labeling of antibody fragments for molecular imaging applications such as immuno-PET/CT and dual-modality immuno-PET/fluorescence imaging. For radioimmunotherapy, the same antibody fragments are labeled with therapeutic radionuclides.

Zettlitz received her diploma in technical biology (B.Sc. and M.Sc. equivalent) at University of Stuttgart, Germany. She received her Dr. rer. nat. (Ph.D. equivalent) in antibody engineering from the Institute of Cell Biology and Immunology at University of Stuttgart, Germany. She continued her training in the U.S. with postdoctoral research in antibody engineering and molecular imaging at UCLA.