Antibody Therapeutics Xchange

Target Selection

Time

Titles and Bullets

Facilitator

8:30am – 9:00am

Opening Address & Keynote:

10:10am – 10:40am

1-2-1 Meetings

10:45am – 11:45am

Lead Identification topic Harnessing targeted, naturally derived antibodies through polyclonal antibody sequencing

How to overcome the challenges of measuring and quantifying the specific antibody response in your animal or human model?
What strategies can be implemented to leverage the over-expressed antibodies the animal or human produces naturally as a therapeutic or biomarker?
How to overcome issues of downstream optimization sooner?

Anthony Stajduhar

Director, Business Development
Rapid Novor

Anthony has been heading the business development at Rapid Novor for nearly 4 years, merging his previous 8 years of experience in the business roles with a strong passion for biomedical research, stemming from his training in biomedical engineering. His current efforts are focused on the growth of the REpAb™and NovorIg™ platforms with pharmaceutical and biotech companies globally. His partnerships are focused on using REpAb in patients or animal models to sequence monoclonal antibodies from polyclonal sera, as well as immune system profiling using NovorIg, the team’s NGS based analysis to monitor the relative quantity of specific antibodies over time. Anthony’s a maker and in his spare time takes advantage of the Toronto HackLab to do biological research and other engineering projects.

11:50am – 12:20am

1-2-1 Meetings

12:20pm – 1:00pm

Lunch Break

1:35pm – 2:35pm

Selecting solid tumor targets for bispecific T-cell engagers

Target classes: native cell surface proteins, cancer glycans, HLA-presented epitopes: window into intracellular expression and modification
A continuum of targets: lineage specific markers, TAAs, CTAs, neoantigens
Primary targets and secondary targets for TME remodeling/escape from immune suppression

Jonah Rainey

Chief Scientific Officer
Immetas Therapeutics

Jonah Rainey holds a PhD in Biochemistry from Tufts University and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Wisconsin and the Salk Institute. He has engaged in discovery, research, and development of bispecific antibodies for 12 years. He is an inventor on several patents describing novel bispecific platforms and current clinical candidates that exploit these platforms. Jonah contributed to research and early development of multiple clinical candidates in phase 1 and 2, and led many advanced preclinical programs in oncology, infectious disease, autoimmunity, and other therapeutic areas. Industry experience includes MacroGenics, MedImmune, MabVax, Oriole Biotech and Gritstone Oncology.

2:40pm – 3:10pm

1-2-1 Meetings

3:10pm – 3:40pm

1-2-1 Meetings

3:45pm – 4:45pm

Antibody epitopes: Targeting, screening or predicting?

Epitope coverage and bins: At which stage(s) and how can we think about them?
What are best methods for looking at epitopes in early hit discovery?
Preferred epitopes for distinct MoAs (internalizers, ADCC-induction, agonists) – screening or design? What can we learn?
Antibody sequence to epitope correlation – match or distant relation?
In silico design of antibodies to target defined epitopes – future or fiction?

Lore Florin

Director, Antibody Generation
Bristol-Myers Squibb

Lore leads the Antibody Generation group at Bristol-Myers Squibb, which supports therapeutic programs across multiple therapeutic areas with sequence- and epitope diversified antibodies. She joined BMS from Boehringer Ingelheim, where she held several positions, leading teams and projects in Antibody Discovery, Early Development and Technology Management. She received her Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology from the German Cancer Center in Heidelberg, Germany.

4:50pm – 5:20pm

Closing Keynote & Address:

Lead Identification

Time

Titles and Bullets

Facilitator

8:30am – 9:00am

Opening Address & Keynote:

9:05am – 10:05am

How do therapeutic antibody project specifications affect your lead discovery/identification strategy?

Does your choice of target or preferred mechanism of action influence your approach to lead discovery?
What role do less-scientific considerations – like budget, timelines, pipeline strategy – have in your choice of discovery platform?
Do your tolerances for in-licensing new IP or discovery platforms change depending on preferred antibody format or MOA?

Shelley Force Aldred

Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Sesimic Bio

Shelley Force Aldred is Founder and CEO of Seismic Bio. Prior to this, she served as VP for Preclinical Development at TeneoBio where she led the preclinical efforts creating a CD3xBCMA bispecific antibody, from product concept to IND-ready package. Shelley was formerly director of R&D for Active Motif following the acquisition of SwitchGear Genomics in 2013. In 2006, she co-founded SwitchGear Genomics and she served as its COO. Prior to founding SwitchGear Genomics, Shelley was a Scientific Director on Stanford’s ENCODE Project and received her Ph.D. from Stanford University.

10:10am – 10:40am

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

10:45am – 11:45am

Challenges in obtaining physiologically relevant binding data

What is physiologically relevant data?
How do you measure binding in complex matrices?
How does temperature affect binding?
Does purifying your samples affect binding?

Thomas Glass

Senior Scientist
Sapidyne Instruments

Thomas Glass is a co-founder of Sapidyne Instruments Inc. where his present position is Senior Scientist. He is a co-inventor of the KinExA technology which underlies their successful line of KinExA instruments used in characterizing the binding constants of reversible interactions including receptor-ligand, antibody-antigen etc. His undergraduate training is in Physics and his interest in measurements and instrumentation lead him through a Masters degree in Optics and a PhD thesis centered on environmental immunoassay. He actively supports development of new and improved binding measurement techniques centered on KinExA’s core interest of accurate binding constant measurement.

11:50am – 12:20pm

1-2-1 Meetings

12:20pm – 1:00pm

Lunch Break

1:35pm – 2:35pm

Harnessing single B cell sorting technologies for lead identification

What are the technologies and their role in the evolution of discovery of therapeutic antibodies to complex targets?
How can we mine the memory B cell repertoire using diverse single-cell sorting technologies?
High-throughput single-cell screening and sequencing technologies for enabling antibody discovery – new horizons.
Antibody discovery and engineering platforms- Harnessing the diverse B cell repertoires using microfluidics and computational discovery.
How AI is currently/or can be used for in silico antibody discovery and development ?

Pallavi Tawde

Senior Director, Antibody Discovery & Engineering
TrueBinding

Pallavi Tawde is Senior Director, Antibody Discover & Engineering at TrueBinding where she leads discovery of next generation bio-therapeutics for Oncology, Immuno-Oncology, Fibrosis, Auto-Immune and Metabolic disorders. Prior to this Pallavi was Head of Antibody Discovery at Denali Therapeutics which followed several scientist roles at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer. She was also a post-doctoral scientist at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute focusing on HIV vaccines and Hepatitis B co-infection. Pallavi has an M.S. and Ph.D from Florida State University.

2:40pm – 3:10pm

1-2-1 Meetings

3:10pm – 3:40pm

1-2-1 Meetings

3:45pm – 4:45pm

Lead identification strategies for bispecific antibody therapeutics and Antibody Drug Conjugates

Why initial T Cell Engager (TCE) bispecific molecules failed to advance?
How to design better bispecific molecules to improve therapeutic window?
How to target solid tumors with TCEs?
What are the reasons for recent success of Antibody drug conjugates?

Vangipuram Rangan

Senior Director, Protein Sciences
CytomX Therapeutics

Vangipuram Rangan is currently leading the Protein Sciences group at CytomX to support all the Probody discovery and development programs. He has more than 30 years of experience in enzymology and protein chemistry and about 18 years of experience in therapeutic biologics drug development. Prior to joining CytomX, he led the antibody process and analytics group at Medarex/BMS for 17 years. He has successfully transitioned more than 15 antibody therapeutics and 3 ADCs from discovery to IND for oncology, IO and immunology assets including approved drug Opdivo. Rangan obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Mysore, India.

4:50pm – 5:20pm

Closing Keynote & Address:

Antibody Optimization

Time

Titles and Bullets

Facilitator

8:30am – 9:00am

Opening Address & Keynote:

9:05am – 10:05am

Antibody developability – from inherent sequence to CMC outcome

Why and when to assess antibody developability?
Are there biophysical assays that should be prioritized in the developability assessment?
What is the right balance between biological activity and developability?

Guna Kannan

Vice President, Biotherapeutics
Denali Therapeutics

Guna has more than 20 years of protein engineering experience and has helped to develop several novel biotherapeutic platforms. He currently serves as the Head of Biotherapeutics Discovery at Denali Therapeutics Inc. In this role, he helps to coordinate activities ranging from target validation to IND-enabling studies. Prior to joining Denali, he was a Director of Antibody Engineering and CMC at Santen & Affinita Biotech, and a Principal Scientist and protein engineering and optimization group lead at Amgen. Guna has co-authored 60+ peer-reviewed research articles and is a listed patent co-inventor of both clinical molecules and novel platform technologies.

10:10am – 10:40am

1-2-1 Meetings

10:45am – 11:45am

Choosing the right platform for developability optimization

How to optimize antibody sequence without introducing unnatural mutations?
How to thoroughly explore natural antibody sequence space around your lead?
Humanizing and optimizing your lead at the same time – pitfalls?
How do you exclude potential developability dipeptide motifs from your library?

Aaron Sato

Chief Scientific Officer
Twist Biopharma (division of Twist Bioscience)

Aaron is Chief Scientific Officer of the Biopharma Vertical at Twist Bioscience. Prior to Twist, he served as Chief Scientific Officer of LakePharma, leading the California Antibody Center, which discovers novel antibody therapeutics for its clients. He also oversaw all discovery research functions both as Vice President of Protein Sciences at Surrozen, and previously, as Vice President of Research at Sutro Biopharma, Inc. He also held director level positions at both Oncomed and Dyax Corp.

11:50am – 12:20pm

1-2-1 Meetings

12:20pm – 1:00pm

Networking Lunch

1:00pm – 1:30pm

Poster Session: Early immunogenicity risk assessment: a suite of assays to guide lead candidate selection – ImmunXperts

Poster Abstract

New mAbs or agents with other structures have revolutionized treatment options for several diseases and malignancies in the past few years, and more are currently being evaluated in the clinic. The development of new therapeutics comes with a series of challenges and questions, of which one is the risk for unwanted immunogenicity which can lead to decreased efficacy and safety concerns.

Today, both in silico and in vitro preclinical tools are available to identify early on therapeutic candidates with a high immunogenicity risk potential. Additionally, certain tools can be used to mitigate the immunogenicity potential, and thus improve and accelerate therapeutic drug development and reduce the number of clinical failures.

1:35pm – 2:35pm

Strategies and models for early assessments of developability and PK

Each antibody format has limitations- what are the work flows that assess the priority characteristics of multiple formats?
Which independent assessments of antibodies predict stable bi/multi-specific antibodies?
What is good enough to warrant progression of an antibody candidate?

Arun Kashyap

Vice President Research
Arch Oncology

Arun Kashyap is currently Vice President, Research at Arch Oncology. Prior to this, he was Director, Antibody Discovery at Compugen USA, Inc in South San Francisco. His work has focused on the creation and utilization of peptide and antibody phage display libraries for therapeutic discovery in cancer, inflammatory disease, and infectious disease. Arun received an A.B. in Zoology from the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

2:40pm – 3:10pm

1-2-1 Meetings

3:10pm – 3:40pm

1-2-1 Meetings

4:50pm – 5:20pm

Closing Keynote & Address:

Genomics in Drug Discovery

Time

Titles and Bullets

Facilitator

8:30am – 9:00am

Opening Address & Keynote:

9:05am – 10:05am

Use of single domain antibodies to build bispecifics and multifunctional therapeutics

Compare and contrast features of single domain antibodies to traditional monoclonal antibodies
Discuss single domain antibodies as bispecific and ADCs with examples which have shown promise as therapeutics
Discuss single domain antibodies for extracellular targets versus intracellular targets
Discuss advantages and drawbacks

Seema Kantak

Vice President, Biotherapeutics
Exelixis

Seema Kantak is currently Vice President, Biotherapeutics at Exelixis where she is leading the oncology biotherapeutics external R&D effort, focusing on the identification, evaluation and early development of biologics assets and is responsible for establishing, building and advancing a biotherapeutics portfolio. Prior to Exelixis she was Chief Scientific Officer at a start-up, Symic Bio. Prior to joining Symic, Seema held leadership positions at Nektar Therapeutics, XOMA, Celera Therapeutics and Axys Pharmaceuticals. Seema has contributed to several IND submissions in multiple therapeutic areas. She received her Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from Wayne State University School of Medicine, and completed her postdoctoral work at UCSF. Dr. Kantak also holds a M.S. in Biology from Wayne State University and a M.S. in Biophysics from Bombay University.

10:10am – 10:40am

1-2-1 Meetings

10:45am – 11:45am

Antibody Optimization topic De-risking of lead biotherapeutic candidates by early immunogenicity assessment

Why immunogenicity can be assessed early on? When is it considered as a risk?
How can immunogenicity be assessed?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches (in silico versus in vitro)? Which types of assays have been the most reliable?
What are some common challenges and how can they be overcome? How do these data correlate to the clinical outcome?
What are the regulatory bodies advising and how do they interpret the data?

Amin Osmani

Customer Solutions Manager
ImmunXperts (a Nexelis company)

Amin holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from McGill University, a Graduate Diploma in Biotechnology & Genomics, and a Master of Science degree in Cell & Molecular Biology both from Concordia University.

Early in his career, Amin worked on the cell cycle genetics of the fungal pathogen Candida albicans, characterizing the role a protein plays in modulating response to the environment. His passion for entrepreneurship led him to a business development role in the personalized medicine field before joining the contract research industry to help bring safe and effective medical innovations to patients.

11:50am – 12:20pm

1-2-1 Meetings

12:20pm – 1:00pm

Lunch Break

2:40pm – 3:10pm

1-2-1 Meetings

3:10pm – 3:40pm

1-2-1 Meetings

3:45pm – 4:45pm

Chain-pairing strategies in creating bispecifics

What is current “State of the Art”?
There is a lot of IP directed toward electrostatic steering, or charged pairing. Is there still room for engineering in this regard? What works best?
What other types of engineering strategies can be applied toward chain pairing?
Manufacturability is still an issue when it comes to chain pairing; how can this best be addressed?

John Delaney

Director, Research Technologies & Collaborations
Amgen

John joined Amgen in 1992 serving in various roles across the Protein Science and Biologics function, and most recently leading Amgen’s Biologic Discovery function responsible for identifying large molecule therapeutic candidates in collaboration with all Amgen Therapeutic Areas. From 2010 through 2019, John was the Site Head for Amgen’s Burnaby, British Columbia research facility, managing the company’s significant protein science resources in Canada, and overseeing site administration

John has a new unique role in Amgen Research, being responsible technology and innovation prospecting while developing, growing, and encouraging collaborations across the spectrum of Research disciplines.

John holds a Bachelor of Science in Zoology from the University of Montana and earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Arizona under the guidance of Dr. Harris Bernstein. He completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Utah’s Department of Cellular, Viral, and Molecular Biology working on the molecular biology of chaperones and bacterial thermotolerance.

4:50m – 5:20pm

Closing Keynote & Address:

Targeted Therapies

Time

Titles and Bullets

Facilitator

8:30am – 9:00am

Opening Address & Keynote:

9:05am – 10:05am

How to effectively apply T-Cell engagers to solid tumors

Promising solid tumor antigen targets
Issues of on-target, off-tumor toxicity
Overcoming the suppressive TME
Combination strategies with solid tumor TCEs

Nathan Trinklein

Chief Technology Officer
TeneoBio

Nathan Trinklein is currently Chief Technology Officer at Teneobio. His group employs a new sequence-based approach for antibody discovery that leverages next-gen sequence and high-throughput recombinant expression to screen large numbers of diverse sequence-defined antibodies. This approach is specifically well-suited for developing agonist antibodies and was used to develop a novel CD3 bispecific antibody platform for T-cell redirection. Prior to Teneobio, Nathan was co-founder and CEO of SwitchGear Genomics, a venture-backed company that was acquired in 2013. SwitchGear developed and commercialized a unique cell-based platform for small molecule pathway screening. Nathan served as the Technical Director of the Stanford ENCODE project and received his Ph.D from Stanford University.

10:10am – 10:40am

1-2-1 Meetings

10:45am – 11:45am

Addressing challenging targets in therapeutic antibody discovery

Successful strategies for targeting multi-pass membrane proteins
How to approach targets with high sequence homology across species
Platform considerations to identify condition-specific binders
In what ways do we access intracellular targets with antibody-based modalities

David Passmore

Head of Business Development
YUMAB

David Passmore has expertise in therapeutic antibody discovery with professional experience across research and business development functions. David is currently the Head of Business Development for YUMAB; located in Germany, YUMAB provides technologies, contract research, and services for the discovery and development of fully human antibodies. He was previously an Associate Director of Protein Therapeutics at Bristol-Myers Squibb; where he led a team of scientists to support the discovery and early development of antibody-based therapeutics. David joined Medarex in 2001 and was part of the team that discovered nivolumab (Opdivo®).

11:50am – 12:20pm

1-2-1 Meetings

12:20pm – 1:00pm

Networking Lunch

1:35pm – 2:35pm

Do bispecifics need to be better than combinations?

What would you like to achieve when propose a bispecific idea?
What is need-to-have and nice-to-have for in vitro MoA verification?
Does bispecific have to be better than monotherapy and combo in animal models?
What are the appropriate PD/CMC assessment during lead generation, pre-clinical and manufacture stages?
Any special consideration for GLP tox studies for bispecifics?

Wenfeng Xu

Vice President Research
Hengenix

Wenfeng Xu received his bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry at Fudan University, Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at Chinese Academy of Sciences, and postdoctoral training at University of Washington in Seattle. He started his industrial career at ZymoGenetics in 1997 and contributed to the discovery of several cytokines and their receptors (e.g. IL20, IL21, IL22, BAFF, IFN-lambda, TIGIT, B7H6). He joined Novo Nordisk in 2008 as Director of Molecular Immunology for target validation and trial support in autoimmunity and inflammation field, and served at Genentech in 2015 as Associate Director of BioAnalytical Sciences for bioanalytical assay support of all immune-oncology clinical projects.

2:40pm – 3:10pm

1-2-1 Meetings

3:10pm – 3:40pm

1-2-1 Meetings

3:45pm – 4:45pm

Considerations for combining mAbs with other therapeutic modalities

Advantages and challenges of antibody combinations with small molecule therapeutics
Combination of antibodies with protein therapeutics (e.g. cytokines)
Antibodies in combination with cell therapies and vaccines
When to combine an antibody and another modality into a single molecule

Elena Brin

Chief Scientific Officer & Co-Founder
Athae Bio

Elena Brin earned her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Northwestern University in 2002. She studied tumor immune evasion, immune-modulatory properties of cytokines/ cytokine gene therapy at Canji, Inc. (Schering-Plough). Elena was part of the team that developed nadofaragene firadenovec which recently showed impressive phase III results in bladder cancer patients. She continued to work on cancer drug discovery at Maxim Pharmaceuticals (EpiCept), Ambrx, Pfizer and Polaris Pharmaceuticals leading teams and projects in targeted and Immuno-Oncology, contributing from an early discovery to an IND submission. Elena co-authored multiple peer-reviewed publications, presented at conferences and is a co-inventor on several patent applications. In August 2020, Elena co-founded Athae Bio, a biotechnology company that incorporates machine learning into drug discovery.

4:50pm – 5:20pm

Closing Keynote & Address:

Antibody Therapeutics Xchange

Target Selection

Partners