Short Courses

Monday, 9th March 2020 12:30 – 15:00

Short Course 1: Oncolytic Virus Therapy - Current Field, Challenges and Future Directions - Detailed Agenda

Ulrich M. Lauer, MD, Professor, Vice Chairman, Internal Medicine VIII, Medicine, University Hospital Tübingen
Adel Samson, MD, PhD, CRUK Clinician Scientist, Group Leader, Translational Cancer Immunotherapy Group, University of Leeds

This course will focus on current status of pre-clinical, translational and clinical data for oncolytic viruses, examine several mechanisms being responsible for resistances observed in oncolytic viral treatments and approaches that help to choose the best virotherapeutic for each patient. Significant challenges in widely applying oncolytic virus in the clinic still remain and will be discussed in details.

Monday, 9th March 2020 15:30 – 18:15

Short Course 2: Next-Generation Immunotherapies - Detailed Agenda

Stephen Beers, PhD, Professor, Immunology and Immunotherapy, Cancer Immunology, University of Southampton Faculty of Medicine
Eric Smith, PhD, Senior Director, Bispecific Antibodies, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Dario Neri, PhD, Professor, Biomacromolecules, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich), Switzerland
John Maher, MD, PhD, Consultant and Senior Lecturer, Immunology, Cancer Studies, King’s College London
Sophia N. Karagiannis, BA, MS, PhD, Professor, Translational Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy, St. John’s Institute of Dermatology, Basic & Medical Biosciences, King's College London

This short course features exciting approaches being used by todays immune-oncology scientists. You will learn about current successes and future potential, and how the leaders in the field overcome the challenges encountered.

Wednesday, 11th March 2020 18:45 - 21:30

Dinner Short Course 3: Engineering of Bispecific Antibodies and Multi-Specific Non-Antibody Scaffolds - Detailed Agenda

Mathieu Cinier, PhD, Scientific Director, Affilogic
Mattias Levin, PhD, Senior Scientist, Antibody Engineering, Alligator Bioscience AB

This interactive short course will give a comprehensive overview of the considerations to make when developing a bispecific antibody. This includes a review of the plethora of formats developed to date as well as discussions on how the architecture of the bispecific format can affect its biological functions. It will also cover the many challenges, often in terms of developability, that these formats frequently are accompanied with. An overview on existing non antibody scaffold technologies will also be reviewed. Challenges in their development will be discussed together with their pros and cons regarding antibody-based therapeutics. Applications and therapeutic needs that are targeted with non-antibody scaffolds will be also addressed, highlighting the diversity of formats currently in development. Eventually, take home messages will be given over the review of several case studies.