IMMUNO-ONCOLOGY XCHANGE
WEST COAST
San Francisco
September 26, 2023

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Welcome to hubXchange’s Immuno-Oncology Xchange West Coast 2023, bringing together executives from pharma and biotech to address and find solutions to the key issues faced in developing immuno-oncology therapies, through a series of roundtable discussions. 

Discussion topics will cover Immune Biomarkers, Translational Research, Clinical Development, Cell Therapies and Next-Generation Therapies.

Take advantage of this unique highly interactive meeting format designed for maximum engagement and collaboration with your peers.

Please note this is an In-Person meeting.

Venue Details: DoubleTree by Hilton San Francisco Airport, 835 Airport Blvd, Burlingame CA 94010-9949

SNAPSHOTS OF DISCUSSION TOPICS

  • The rise of spatial omics technologies and their potential for new biomarker discovery
  • Predictive biomarkers for IO treatment used in clinical practice now and in the future
  • How to select the right translational screening model to monitor IO agents
  • Pre-clinical in vivo models for improved toxicity prediction
  • Early signals of efficacy, biomarkers and confidence in early clinical I/O trials
  • How to maximize clinical success: Patient / indication selection strategies beyond target expression and PD-L1 status during early clinical development
  • Exploring different cellular modalities
  • TME-targeting combinations – improving efficacy
  • Antibody discovery for ADCs and other therapeutic modalities
  • Using next-gen multi-specific antibodies for the treatment of solid tumors
Agenda-at-a-glance

Full Xchange Agenda

Click on each track for detailed agenda

Immune Biomarkers

Time
Titles and Bullets
Facilitator
08:00 – 08:30
Registration 
08:30 – 09:00

Opening Address & Keynote Presentation by Synexa

The Search for Immunological Beauty

The immune system elegantly strives to control and balance the interplay of flexibility and robustness in the interaction of an organism with its environment. Scientific understanding and appreciation of the coordinated biological complexity of the immune system is expanding on a daily basis. This growth has been paralleled by our ability to harness the power of the immune system for the development of therapeutic interventions. Subjectively we may describe the immune system as “a thing of beauty” in our attempts to abstract, acknowledge and to some degree comprehend the enormity of its intricacies. There is however merit in exploring alternative views to define and quantify immunological beauty as a means of generating fresh insights into the fundamental organization of the immune system which in turn will likely impact our ability to develop and better monitor immunotherapies.

Justin Devine is a medical doctor, immunologist, pharmacologist (Stellenbosch University) and a co-founder of Synexa. Currently operating as Chief Innovation Officer, his primary focus is to understand clients’ objectives in new drug development by designing biomarker strategies to bring real insight to the challenges of clinical development. Justin has a very deep understanding of the role that biomarkers and pharmacogenetics play in understanding the performance of a candidate drug. He is particularly passionate about improving the drug development process by bringing innovative approaches to early phase research, including new ideas in translational medicine, bioinformatics and artificial intelligence.

Justin Devine web
09:05 – 10:05

Pharmacodynamic and predictive biomarkers for IO from preclinical to clinical stages

  • What’s the value of peripheral PD biomarkers during dose-escalation if IO agents are targeting tumor microenvironment?
  • To select or not to select? The Pros and Cons of selecting patients for tumor-targeted IO agents.
  • Will the spatial analysis of tumor microenvironment help for future patient stratification?

Jack Chen is currently Scientific Director within Precision Medicine Organization at AbbVie. He leads a group of PhD and non-PhD scientists at Bay Area and North Chicago sites to develop translational research strategy for 10+ IO programs including preclinical and clinical stages. Prior to this, he was Senior Principal Scientist in Cancer Immunology Discovery group at Pfizer and previously worked at OncoMed and Eli Lilly. He obtained his PhD from Johns Hopkins University.

Jack Chen
10:10 – 10:40
1-2-1 Meetings/Networking Break
10:40 – 11:10
1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break
11:10 – 11:20
Morning Refreshments
11:20 – 12:20
Improving IO patient outcomes with predictive biomarkers that assess the Tumor Immune Microenvironment (TIME)
  • How does measuring the biology of the tumor and surrounding TIME provide a clearer picture of which patients may respond to ICI therapy?
  • What biomarker considerations currently go into designing ICI clinical trials?
  • What challenges do you currently face with patient selection and biomarker use in ICI trials?
  • A wide net or a targeted approach?
  • What constitutes a reliable predictive biomarker for better patient selection and clinical trial design?

Rob Seitz currently works as a consultant in the biomarker space providing expertise with discovery, development (both scientifically and commercially), clinical validation (retrospective studies) and study design (prospective studies).  His 20 years of experience has included CEO, chief biotechnology officer, head of data science and over five years of consulting in the biotechnology space. Commercial biomarker products that he has developed include: DetermaIO, Mammostrat, and TLE3.  He has authored dozens of peer reviewed publications in the biomarker space, and holds 13 patents, with several more pending. 

RSeitz Headshot
12:20 – 13:20

Networking Lunch

13:20 – 13:50

Spotlight Presentation by Inotiv

Quantitative Profiling of Immune Checkpoint Protein Target Systems with Target Sufficiency

New therapeutics targeting the immune checkpoint (IC) TIGIT are in clinical development with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors for solid tumors indications, but without protein biomarkers. We used targeted mass spectrometry to precisely quantify TIGIT, DNAM1, PVR, PD-1, PD-L1, and PD-L2 in 97 primary non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) and matched tumor draining lymph nodes (TDLN). Only 56% of NSCLC cases expressed TIGIT, which was quantifiable almost exclusively in TDLN. TIGIT, DNAM1 and PVR abundance varied over approximately 25-fold and were co-expressed only in some tumors. Quantitation of target system proteins may explain differences in response to combined anti-TIGIT anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapeutics.

Daniel C. Liebler is Vice President for Proteomic Technologies at Inotiv, Inc. He received a Ph.D. in Pharmacology at Vanderbilt and did postdoctoral training in Biochemistry and Biophysics at Oregon State University. He held faculty appointments for 30 years at the University of Arizona and at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. Liebler has been a leader in the application of mass spectrometry and proteomic technology to chemical biology and cancer proteogenomics. In 2017, Dr. Liebler founded Protypia (acquired by Inotiv in 2022) to provide a mass spectrometry platform for drug target analysis for diverse therapeutic areas, including immuno-oncology.

Daniel C. Liebler
13:55 – 14:25
1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break
14:25 – 14:55
1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break
15:00 – 15:30

Spotlight Presentation by EnableMedicine

From Images to Insights: Deep Spatial Profiling Reveals Disease and Treatment Biomarkers

Selecting the right biomarkers is important for success in phase transition of clinical trials. Multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF) has increasingly allowed us to select high-quality protein biomarkers that correlate more strongly with patient outcomes. There is a growing need to identify high-quality protein biomarkers to support clinical research, and spatial biology is showing promise in providing these answers.

We are using a 51-plex protein panel that covers a range of functional and tumor microenvironment-related biomarkers, including lymphoid and myeloid cell markers, tissue biomarkers, antigen presenting cells, and immune checkpoint and activation markers. By analyzing this comprehensive panel of biomarkers, we have identified cell types that are up or downregulated in different disease states. Further, we have explored the spatial relationships between cells, uncovering important differences in cell-to-cell interactions and neighborhoods between disease states. These spatial analyses provide a powerful toolkit for discovering key biomarkers in various diseases and treatments.

Gulpreet covers Business development at Enable Medicine for West coast and Central US. She completed her Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she studied organelle biology using live cell imaging and instructed at the Vision Research Microscopy Core Facility. Gulpreet served as National Representative at Olympus Scientific Solutions, supporting researchers in various microscopy and image analysis applications. She is an experienced biotech professional with a strong research background and expertise in helping researchers apply cutting edge technologies to their studies.

Gulpreet Kaur
15:35 – 16:05
1-2-1 Meetings / Networking Break
16:05 – 16:15
Afternoon Refreshments
16:15 – 16:45

Spotlight Presentation by Burning Rock Dx

Unraveling the Implications of ctDNA As a Biomarker Using Tumor-Informed MRD for Solid Tumors

Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has been an emerging biomarker of minimal residual disease (MRD) incorporated into clinical trials and practices for prognosis prediction, treatment efficacy evaluation, and patient stratification. The sensitivity of the MRD test plays a crucial role in detecting ctDNA in patients due to the extremely low abundance of ctDNA in blood. A variety of technical approaches to MRD assessment have been published and validated. The presentation will cover the potential utilizations of MRD, different technical methods to optimize the test results, and real-world applications in clinical studies.

Michael Chen is a translational medicine scientist at Burning Rock Dx with prior medical affairs experiences leading projects in inflammatory disease, obesity, and hematologic malignancy therapeutic portfolios. He obtained a doctorate of pharmacy from the University of Southern California in 2022 with a passion for advancing precision oncology.

Michael Chen
16:50 – 17:50

The rise of spatial omics technologies and their potential for new biomarker discovery

  • What is the current state of leveraging spatial immune relationships as biomarkers?
  • Which spatial relationships show promise for future use as biomarkers?
  • How much plexing is actually enough for 1) the discovery of new spatial biomarkers, and 2) the detection of these biomarkers in clinical practice?
  • What are spatial tools will we see in the future clinical setting for diagnostics, prognostics, and CDX?

Tyler Risom is a Principal Scientist in the Research Pathology Department at Genentech, with a lab focused on developing new hyperplex spatial proteomics strategies to elucidate mechanisms of action in our early development targets, and to identify new biomarkers for improved patient selection in our late stage and reverse translation efforts.

Tyler Risom
17:50 – 18:50

Drinks-Canape Reception

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