Antibody Therapeutics Xchange West Coast 2019

Target Selection

Time

Titles and Bullets

Facilitator

8:00am – 8:30am

Registration

8:30am – 9:00am

Opening Address & Keynote: Ongoing Challenges Faced by the Antibody Sector – Seema Kantak, Executive Director, Biotherapeutics, Exelixis

9:05am – 10:05am

Single agent vs. combinations; antibody or other platform (fragments, bispecific, etc)

What is the situation?
Swiss Army Knife Approach: piling multiple non-dependent targets on a single molecule
MoA completely depends on BiS
MoA may be enhanced by BiS
Early regulatory and CMC advantages may come back to bite you in later stages
Is there a future regulatory path for recombinant polyclonal therapeutics?

Jonah Rainey

Vice President Antibody Therapeutics
Gritstone Oncology

10:10am – 10:40am

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

10:40am – 10:50am

Morning Refreshments

10:50am – 11:50am

Implementing discovery strategies to value the therapeutic potential of lead antibody candidates

Optimal discovery method versus available budget – how do we decide the best path?
Animal immunizations, natural human antibody repertoire library selection, or synthetic library selection – what are the pros and cons?
What is the best strategy for choosing the lead candidate selection criteria and at what point should a functional study be integrated – early or later?
What are the ideal immunization and selection tools? If appropriate cell lines and/or recombinant proteins are not available?

Barry DuPlantis

Director of Sales
ImmunoPrecise Antibodies

Barry Duplantis received a double major in Biochemistry and in Chemistry, and his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Victoria in 2011, where he specialized in intracellular pathogenesis, bacterial genetics and synthetic biology. He subsequently founded and was CEO of DuVax Vaccines and Reagents Inc, a biotechnology company that specialized in the development of bacterial vaccines. Under Barry, DuVax successfully entered into collaborative research projects with two major pharmaceutical companies and delivered vaccines candidates for two separate pilot studies. He has also sat on the advisory board of biotechnology companies in the Victoria and Vancouver, B.C. areas.

11:55am – 12:25am

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

12:30pm – 1:30pm

Preclinical validation: How much is enough and are animal models useful in every case?

What does it mean (to you) to validate a target?
What alternative criteria are used to justify discovery on a non-validated target?
Can an imperfect animal model stand in the way of a perfectly good drug?
When is a cell-based model superior to an animal model?

Alan Kutach

Principal Scientist
NGM Biopharmaceuticals

Alan is experienced with pre-clinical biologic drug discovery campaigns for a wide range of targets. He has served as project leader and engineering lead for both antibody and non-antibody biologic drug candidates.

Prior to NGM, Alan received his Ph.D. from UC San Diego for investigations of transcriptional regulation, post-doctoral training at UCSF, and then stints with Roche (Palo Alto), and Altravax.

1:30pm – 2:30pm

Networking Lunch

2:30pm – 3:00pm

Poster Session – DeepDisplay™: a ground-breaking and influential human lead antibody discovery platform utilizing OmniAb® animals –

ImmunoPrecise Antibodies

3:00pm – 3:30pm

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

3:30pm – 3:40pm

Afternoon Refreshments

3:40pm – 4:10pm

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

4:15pm – 5:15pm

Prioritisation: so many targets, so little time

How do you nominate a potential drug target?
How do you rate target tractability?
What do you require before committing any resources to investigate a target?
How do you deal with competing priorities within you discovery group?
How early do you engage other groups in target prioritization (translational, Non-Clinical, Clinicaland business development?

Robin Barbour

Head of Antibody & Assay Development
Prothena

Robin has been involved in the development of monoclonal antibodies for over 25 years. At Elan, she headed the group that developed both the murine version of Natalizumab for Multiple Sclerosis and Bapineuzumab for Alzheimer’s Disease. At Prothena, currently 2 additional antibodies developed by her group are in Clinical Trials, one for the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease in Phase II, and the other for the treatment of TTR amyloidosis in phase I. Additionally, her group develops all pre-clinical and clinical assays for PK, ADA and biomarkers needed for Prothena’s programs.

5:15pm – 5:45pm

Closing Keynote & Address: Future Challenges and Opportunities of Antibody-Based Therapeutics – Nathan Trinklein, Chief Technology Officer, TeneoBio

5:45pm

Canape/Drinks Reception

Lead Identification

Time

Titles and Bullets

Facilitator

8:00am – 8:30am

Registration

8:30am – 9:00am

Opening Address & Keynote: Ongoing Challenges Faced by the Antibody Sector – Seema Kantak, Executive Director, Biotherapeutics, Exelixis

9:05am – 10:05am

Considerations for choosing the best antibody platform for lead identification

What are the primary factors that influence your selection of a discovery platform?
How do you weigh scientific, operational, and IP/technology access concerns?
When seeking an antibody with a particular function (like ligand blocking or receptor agonism) in addition to target specificity, do you change your discovery platform?
Are there any new discovery platforms or technologies on the horizon that have attracted your interest? Which platforms and why?

Shelley Force Aldred

Antibody Therapeutics Expert

Shelley Force Aldred recently 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

10:40am – 10:50am

Morning Refreshments

10:50am – 11:50am

Challenges in measuring affinity and expression of cell surface receptors

How can you be confident in your data when measuring tight binding interactions?
When can native expressing cells be used versus over expressing cells?
What are the current methods available for measuring affinity to cell surface receptors?
What are the current methods available to measure expression of cell surface receptors?
How can problems such as receptor internalization and shedding be overcome?

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.

11:55am – 12:25am

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

12:30pm – 1:30pm

Target Selection topic: Use of mammalian virus display to select antibodies specific for complex membrane antigens

What are the biggest challenges to overcome to enable selection of antibodies specific for multi-pass membrane proteins?
What are the available technical solutions to these challenges?
How can recombinant virus display and VLPs be used to overcome these challenges?

Maria Scirivens

Team Leader, Antibody Selection
Vaccinex

Maria is a 20 plus years experienced Scientist leading a Therapeutic Antibody Discovery team with focus on innovation and difficult targets at Vaccinex, a clinical-stage biotechnology company located in Rochester, New York. Maria is a graduate of Cornell University. Prior to joining Vaccinex in 2003 she has gained research experience at the University of Rochester, Wyeth and Johnson & Johnson Ortho Clinical Diagnostics. Currently her work is focused on Therapeutic Antibody Discovery using Vaccinia Virus Display, Antibody Functional Characterization and ActivMab technology development. ActivMab™ Vaccinia Virus particles display complex antigens (GPCRs, Ion Channels, & Multispanners) for Antibody Discovery.

1:30pm – 2:30pm

Networking Lunch

2:30pm – 3:00pm

NO FUNCTION

3:00pm – 3:30pm

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

3:30pm – 3:40pm

Afternoon Refreshments

3:40pm – 4:10pm

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

4:15pm – 5:15pm

Determining how many leads to move into optimization

It is a numbers game. How many is too many?
How to address affinity and epitope of antibodies during lead optimization?
What are the preferred lead optimization strategies for various biologics modalities?
How to address immunogenicity during lead optimization?
How to derisk the pharmacokinetic issues during lead optimization?

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.

5:15pm – 5:45pm

Closing Keynote & Address: Future Challenges and Opportunities of Antibody-Based Therapeutics – Nathan Trinklein, Chief Technology Officer, TeneoBio

5:45pm

Canape/Drinks Reception

Antibody Optimization

Time

Titles and Bullets

Facilitator

8:00am – 8:30am

Registration

8:30am – 9:00am

Opening Address & Keynote: Ongoing Challenges Faced by the Antibody Sector – Seema Kantak, Executive Director, Biotherapeutics, Exelixis

9:05am – 10:05am

Considering affinity, sequence liability and immunogenicity during Ab optimization

What factors should be considered when determining the affinity needed for a functional activity?
When and how should we remove sequence liabilities and T-cell epitopes?
Is there a platform that could assist in the evaluation of the Ab sequence to improve its affinity, remove liabilities and reduce T-cell epitopes?

Isaac Rondon

Senior Director
Pfizer

Isaac Rondon has over 20 years of experience in the field of antibody engineering. He is a Senior Director in BioMedicine Design at Pfizer Inc. where he has been part of the discovery and development of several biotherapeutic programs. Prior to joining Pfizer in May 2011, Isaac held Director position at Xoma, Catalyst Biosciences, Kalobios and Dyax where he contributed to the development of their technology platforms and the discovery and engineering of biologics. Isaac received his PhD in Pharmacology from Tulane Medical School and did his post-doctoral research at Harvard Medical School.

10:10am – 10:40am

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

10:40am – 10:50am

Morning Refreshments

10:50am – 11:50am

How to define requisite affinity for antibody therapeutics?

Mechanism of action (MOA) drives affinity decisions – how do you determine this? What if MOA is not clear?
Select appropriate epitope then affinity-mature to gain maximal efficacy? How/when is epitope selected?
How do you balance affinity v avidity? What assays do you do to inform this decision?

Yasmina Abdiche

Chief Scientific Officer
Carterra

Prior to joining Carterra as CSO in 2016, Yasmina Abdiche worked for twelve years at Pfizer-Rinat where she was a Research Fellow leading a bioanalytical team discovering therapeutic antibodies and served on Rinat’s leadership team and the governing committee for Pfizer’s Postdoctoral Program. She graduated from Oxford University with a PhD in Biological Chemistry and a Master’s degree in Chemistry, and did postdoctoral research at the University of Utah. Yasmina is co-inventor of fremanezumab, an anti-CGRP antibody set for US market approval in 2018 for chronic migraine and PF-06801591, a PD-1 inhibitor currently in PhI clinical trials for cancer immunotherapy.

11:55am – 12:25am

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

12:30pm – 1:30pm

How to address introduction of polyreactivity/non-specificity, how to screen for it, how to deselect for it?

Balancing germlining with introducing poly/non-reactivity- where is the tipping point?
How does the creation of multi-specific antibodies affect the potential for poly/non-specificity?
Should screening out polyreactivity be an early and essential step for higher potency antibodies, ADCs and CAR-Ts?

Arun Kashyap

Director, Antibody Discovery
CytomX

Arun Kashyap is 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.

1:30pm – 2:30pm

Networking Lunch

2:30pm – 3:00pm

Poster Session – Accelerating the discovery of therapeutic antibodies using high throughput SPR – Carterra

3:00pm – 3:30pm

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

3:30pm – 3:40pm

Afternoon Refreshments

3:40pm – 4:10pm

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

4:15pm – 5:15pm

Using mathematical modeling to optimize therapeutics and de-risk decisions in R&D

What are the biggest challenges in therapeutic development where mathematical modeling could help?
What types of questions can mathematical modeling help with in antibody optimization?
Where is the biggest ROI for incorporating mathematical modeling into a program?

John Burke

Co-Founder, President & Chief Executive Officer
Applied Biomath

John Burke received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Arizona State University, and his BS and MS in Applied Mathematics from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Prior to co-founding Applied BioMath, John was at Boehringer Ingelheim as Associate Director, Head of Systems Biology and promoted to Senior Principal Scientist. John has also held positions at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, the Systems Biology Department at Harvard Medical School, and in Douglas A. Lauffenburger’s lab at MIT.

5:15pm – 5:45pm

Closing Keynote & Address: Future Challenges and Opportunities of Antibody-Based Therapeutics – Nathan Trinklein, Chief Technology Officer, TeneoBio

5:45pm

Canape/Drinks Reception

Alternative Formats

Time

Titles and Bullets

Facilitator

8:00am – 8:30am

Registration

8:30am – 9:00am

Opening Address & Keynote: Ongoing Challenges Faced by the Antibody Sector – Seema Kantak, Executive Director, Biotherapeutics, Exelixis

9:05am – 10:05am

Using multispecific antibodies for T-cell redirection and beyond

Discovery of novel CD3 binding antibodies
Contribution of epitope and affinity to CD3 agonist antibodies
T-cell redirecting bispecific antibodies applied to liquid and solid tumors

Nathan Trinklein

Chief Technology Officer
TeneoBio

Nathan Trinklein is the Chief Technology Officer at Teneobio. Teneobio employs a sequence-based approach for antibody discovery that leverages next-generation sequencing and high-throughput functionally assays to develop fully-human multi-specific antibodies. Prior to Teneobio, Nathan was co-founder and CEO of SwitchGear Genomics, a venture-backed company that was acquired in 2013. He served as the Technical Director of the Stanford ENCODE project and received his Ph.D from Stanford University. Nathan has published over 20 peer-reviewed papers and is an inventor on over 15 patents.

10:10am – 10:40am

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

10:40am – 10:50am

Morning Refreshments

10:50am – 11:50am

Antibody Optimization topic: 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, a 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.

11:55am – 12:25am

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

12:30pm – 1:30pm

Improving binding affinity of Fc regions to optimise therapeutic activity

How much do species differences in FcR affinity, expression pattern or receptor distribution impact target validation and safety predictions?
Enhanced ADCC: it’s not just for tumors anymore! What are the risks of depleting non-tumor cells with ADCC enhanced antibodies?
Binding analysis: What assays are critical and how much information is enough for lead selection/optimization?
Do human polymorphisms in FcR impact antibody screening and selection strategy
How will Fc optimization impact immunogenicity, half-life or binding to FcRn, or developability?

Rena Bahjat

Vice President, Discovery Research
Apexigen

Frances Rena Bahjat serves as Vice President, Discovery Research for Apexigen. She has nearly 20 years of experience encompassing target discovery and preclinical and clinical development of biologics and small molecules for cancer, as well as autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. She studied Biomedical Sciences and Immunology at the University of Florida College of Medicine where she earned her Doctorate in Immunology. She also served in scientific roles at BMS Biologics Discovery and Rigel Pharmaceuticals and in between was an Assistant Professor at Oregon Health & Sciences University. As Associate Director of Pharmacology at Rigel Pharmaceuticals she contributed to the preclinical and clinical development of kinase inhibitors for cancer, allergy, and autoimmune diseases, including recently approved Tavalisse™ for Chronic Immune Thrombocytopenia.

1:30pm – 2:30pm

Networking Lunch

2:30pm – 3:00pm

Poster Session – Synthetic DNA technologies enable single domain antibody discovery – Twist Biopharma, a division of Twist Bioscience

3:00pm – 3:30pm

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

3:30pm – 3:40pm

Afternoon Refreshments

3:40pm – 4:10pm

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

4:15pm – 5:15pm

Antibody Formats (Fabs, bi-paratopics, bi-specifics) to make more effective and safer alternatives to ADCs

Which antibody (protein) properties affect the safety and efficacy of ADCs?
How might new antibody formats improve ADC safety? – increase specificity to target tissue, reduce non-specific internalization, etc.
How might new antibody formats address limitations of ADC efficacy? – tissue penetration, internalization, etc.

Madan Paidhungat

Senior Director, Protein Engineering
CytomX Therapeutics

Madan Paidhungat is Senior Director and Head of Protein Engineering at CytomX Therapeutics, Inc., where he is engaged in developing activatable antibody-based therapeutics. His career has focused on developing and leveraging novel in-vitro-evolution based technologies for therapeutics R&D. Before CytomX, Madan was Director, Biology at Dice Molecules, LLC where he directed biology and informatics to establish a DNA-programmed combinatorial chemistry platform for small-molecule discovery. Prior to that he spent over 12 years at Maxygen Inc., Perseid LLC, and Astellas Inc. applying DNA shuffling to the development of protein-, antibody-, and bi-specific therapeutics.

5:15pm – 5:45pm

Closing Keynote & Address: Future Challenges and Opportunities of Antibody-Based Therapeutics – Nathan Trinklein, Chief Technology Officer, TeneoBio

5:45pm

Canape/Drinks Reception

Targeted Immunotherapies

Time

Titles and Bullets

Facilitator

8:00am – 8:30am

Registration

8:30am – 9:00am

Opening Address & Keynote: Ongoing Challenges Faced by the Antibody Sector – Seema Kantak, Executive Director, Biotherapeutics, Exelixis

9:05am – 10:05am

Strategies to mitigate the toxicity of bispecific T cell engagers

Affinity for CD3: how low can we go?
Can avidity reduce on-target but off-tumor toxicity without compromising efficacy?
How can we validate tumor protease-based prodrug approaches?
Are tri-specific formats ready for prime time?

Volker Schellenberger

President & Chief Technology Officer
Amunix

Volker Schellenberger is President and CEO of Amunix Pharmaceuticals, which he co-founded in 2006. He initially served as Amunix’ Chief Scientific Officer and is the lead inventor of the company’s XTEN as well as XPAT platforms of protease-activated T cell engagers. Volker has over 20 years of industry experience in protein engineering and drug discovery. Prior to co-founding Amunix he served as head of Genencor’s protein engineering department.

Volker received his Ph.D. from Leipzig University (Germany) in 1986. He is author of over 40 scientific papers and inventor of more than 70 issued or pending patent applications. He is a recipient of the Karl Lohmann prize of the German Society of Biochemists.

10:10am – 10:40am

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

10:40am – 10:50am

Morning Refreshments

10:50am – 11:50am

Antibody Optimization topic: Unwanted Immunogenicity: A multifaceted approach to minimize it early on

How can immunogenicity be assessed early on?
How to interpret the results and address any immunogenicity concerns?
What is the perspective of the regulatory authorities on the subject?

Sofie Pattijn

Founder & Chief Technology Officer
ImmunXperts

Sofie has over 20 years of experience in the field of immunogenicity assessment (vaccines and biotherapeutics). She has extensive hands-on lab experience and has managed and coached several In Vitro teams over the last decade. From 2008 till 2013 she was Head of the In Vitro Immunogenicity group at AlgoNomics (Ghent, Belgium) and Lonza Applied Protein Services (Cambridge, UK). Prior to that, she worked at Innogenetics, Belgium for over 15 years.

11:55am – 12:25am

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

12:30pm – 1:30pm

Use of cytokines fused to antibody fragments allows lower dosage while increasing therapeutic effect for targeted cancers

Which antibody formats are most suitable for antibody-cytokine fusions and what are the critical design components
What have we learnt so far from current antibody-cytokine fusions (eg.FAP-IL-2) with regards to therapeutic index
Fine tuning’ an optimal orchestration of the immune response against the tumor while reducing the systemic toxicity of potent cytokines using antibody-cytokine fusions – Can we make this a reality?

Seema Kantak

Executive Director, Biotherapeutics
Exelixis

Seema Kantak is currently Executive Director, 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.

1:30pm – 2:30pm

Networking Lunch

2:30pm – 3:00pm

Poster Session (Antibody Optimization topic) – Case Study: Early immunogenicity assays for candidate selection & optimization – ImmunXperts

3:00pm – 3:30pm

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

3:30pm – 3:40pm

Afternoon Refreshments

3:40pm – 4:10pm

1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break

4:15pm – 5:15pm

Evaluating effectiveness of CD3 bispecific antibody therapies in immuno-competent mouse models

Utility of mouse cross reactive CD3 bispecific antibodies in translating efficacy and toxicity to the clinic
Pros and cons of using CD34+ humanized mice, PBMC or T cell engrafted efficacy models
Importance of using cell lines vs PDx with/without autologous T cells to understand efficacy of CD3 bispecific antibodies and translation to clinical trials

Angus Sinclair

Vice President, Immuno-Oncology
IGM Biosciences

Angus Sinclair PhD is the Vice President Immuno-oncology Research at IGM Biosciences Inc with over 16 yrs experience in the biotech industry. Prior to joining IGM Biosciences, Angus was the Senior Director of Oncology at Northern Biologics Inc, Toronto and Scientific Director of Oncology at Amgen. During his tenure in biotech, Angus has progressed multiple antibody-based and small molecule therapeutics through preclinical research and development to the clinic. Before joining Amgen, Angus held academic positions at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Texas; University of Cambridge, UK and UCSD, California.

5:15pm – 5:45pm

Closing Keynote & Address: Future Challenges and Opportunities of Antibody-Based Therapeutics – Nathan Trinklein, Chief Technology Officer, TeneoBio

5:45pm

Canape/Drinks Reception

Antibody Therapeutics Xchange West Coast 2019

Target Selection

Partners