Infectious diseases of the lower respiratory tract remain among the top five causes of death with 3.1 million reports in 2012. Especially the increasing numbers of infections with drug-resistant pathogens that are refractory to standard antibiotic therapy or even resistant against drugs of last resort, represent a major clinical concern. This project aims to develop a novel, cause-directed cellular therapy for life threatening, pulmonary infections. As a first step we will establish the scalable production of designer immune cells from pluripotent stem cells and subsequently evaluate their therapeutic efficacy in vivo. First proof of concept studies already demonstrate that a local application of phagocytes can rescue mice from severe pulmonary infection with Pseudomonas bacteria.