Innovations from the therapeutics antibody space: obligate bispecific antibodies & T cell engagers
Thursday October 21, 2021, 11am ET / 5pm CET
Speaker: Paul W.H.I. Parren, PhD
Landmark advances in the engineering and development of bispecific antibodies bsAbs are enabling unprecedented innovation and versatility in therapeutic antibody concepts. A defining bsAb feature is their potential for novel functionalities — that is, activities that do not exist in mixtures of the parental or reference antibodies. These so-called obligate bsAb are having a tremendous impact and potential in current and future drug development.
Bispecific engagers that target and activate effector cells, most commonly T cells, represent about 50% of bispecific antibodies in development. Here, next generation bispecific T cell engagers (bsTCEs) with a widened therapeutic window characterized by high potency and high tumor selectivity have strong potential for the treatment of both hematological as well as solid cancers. Lava Therapeutics is developing products building on a platform to conditionally and selectively recruit Vγ9Vδ2 T cells for eradicating tumor cells. This γδ T cell subset has been shown to display powerful anti-tumor immune effector activity, to preferentially kill tumor cells relative to normal cells and has a demonstrated ability to infiltrate human tumors. LAVA’s γδ bsTCEs designed to target and engage Vγ9Vδ2-T cells for the development of novel cancer immunotherapies will be discussed.
Registration is Open!
Thursday October 28, 2021 11am ET / 5 pm CET
Speaker: Björn Cochlovius, PhD
The commercialization of innovative antibody therapeutics needs significant capital investments to fund pre-clinical and clinical studies. Many small biotech that are focused on development lack these resources and the infrastructure needed to launch new biologics. Forming partnerships with larger pharmaceutical companies is one strategy that provides access to the resources needed for later stage development but partnering companies will want to scrutinize the data behind the candidate molecule. For this reason, it is crucial for a biotech company to understand the data packages that need to be generated. These will need to show that the biotech company can meet the necessary regulatory requirements but also answer other key questions that potential development and/or exit partners will have. In this webinar, we will provide a general overview of both areas.
Registration is Open!
Thursday November 4, 2021 11am ET / 5 pm CET
Speaker: Christine Power, PhD
It has been reported that approximately 80% of the FDA-approved medicines over the last 10 years were not registered by the originator or patent assignee. Many novel therapeutic molecules and technologies are initially conceived and developed by small biotechnology (startup) companies or universities, but it is usually big pharma and biotech companies that will bring the resulting therapeutics to the market and commercialize the product. In recent years there has been a trend in large pharma companies to reduce in-house research and development activities and increase in-licensing or acquisition of products to fill their pipelines. New technologies are also being developed so rapidly that it is more feasible for pharma companies to rely on startups for the initial drug development in order to acquire de-risked programs at a later stage in development. However, once a potential asset has been identified it is necessary to perform an in-depth scientific evaluation and due diligence in order to increase the probability of a success or dodge a damp squib. In this presentation, I will describe what this process entails with case studies and some of the pitfalls that may be encountered.
