CONFERENCE DAY TWO - WEDNESDAY JULY 23, 2025

8:00 am Morning Check-In & Coffee

8:50 am Chair’s Opening Remarks

Probing Model Selection Criteria Across Different Indications

9:00 am Panel Discussion: Evaluating the Different Preclinical Tumor Models & Their Applications Across Oncology Therapeutic Development

Synopsis

  • Assessing the pros and cons of the most commonly implemented models
  • Strategies to select the most appropriate model for your cancer study
  • Discussing their contexts of use across oncology drug development and how to leverage biomarkers, and apply reverse translation to bridge the translational gap

9:45 am Session Reserved for GemPharmatech

Synopsis

  • Presentation details to be announced

10:15 am Mastermind Session: Employing Orthotopic & Syngeneic Mouse Models Across Different Indications & Modalities

Synopsis

  • Reiterating the need to compare and contrast subcutaneous versus orthotopic models
  • Spotlighting an orthotopic intracranial model to deliver translatable insights for blood-brain-barrier studies
  • Discussing ideas of patient-derived models enabling accurate predictions for small molecules

10:45 am Morning Networking Break & Poster Awards

Synopsis

The winning poster will be announced at this time. The winner will receive their award, and have their poster showcased on our website as a downloadable file

Applications in Drug Discovery & Screening

11:30 am Determining Activity of ADC & IO Combinations Through Preclinical Tumor Models

Synopsis

  • Considerations when developing immunocompetent models to study ADC activity
  • Syngeneic vs. humanized models – rationale and challenges
  • Optimizing clinical relevance – dose and schedule selection

12:00 pm Optimizing a Patient-Derived Lung Organ-On-A-Chip Model to Deliver More Translatable Insights

  • Marco Campisi Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dana-Farber Cancer Center

Synopsis

  • Discussing the use of organ-on-a-chips to better mimic the tumor microenvironment and cellular interactions for small cell lung cancer
  • Exploring the integration of multiple cell types, including immune cells and stromal cells, to create more physiologically relevant models
  • Discovering the application spatial transcriptomics to characterize these models and gain readouts on CAR-NK assessments

Applications for Efficacy Evaluation & Biomarker Discovery

11:30 am Harnessing Patient-Derived ex vivo Models to Empower Immunotherapy & ADC Combination Development

Synopsis

  • Explaining the need and advantages of using tumor explants to remodel the tumor immune microenvironent and better understand tumor biology
  • Assessing strategies to implement patient-derived tumor explant models from tissue slices to study drug interactions in a spatial context
  • Sharing the future hopes to combine the different model and assays to develop combination strategies for ADC and IO agents and simulate patient response

12:00 pm Uncovering Translational Biomarkers to Better Understand Tumor Biology Across in vitro & in vivo Models

Synopsis

  • Showcasing optimized methods to develop orthotopic mouse models and GEMMS to enhance understanding of the tumor microenvironment
  • Sharing new techniques to implant tumoroids onto mice for research
  • Discussing strategies to accurately image for translational biomarkers across multiple models and disease indications including bladder, glioblastoma colorectal and more

12:30 pm Lunch Break & Networking

1:30 pm Optimizing Syngeneic Mouse Models to Better Develop Cell Therapies

Synopsis

  • Highlighting the rationale behind selecting the model and discussing techniques to optimize them for the study
  • Benchmarking data outputs from these models
  • Uncovering mechanisms of action through these models for cell therapies

1:30 pm Blocking Fatty Acid Oxidation Inhibits Growth of Human Malignancies

  • Sunanda Singh Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Singh Biotechnology LLC

Synopsis

  • Fatty acid oxidation (FAO) is absolutely essential for ATP production by cancers
  • Inhibiting FAO significantly decreases human cancers growth in vitro and in vivo
  • Inhibiting FAO in human patients with metastatic cancers that are refractory to standard of care treatment extends survival in Phase 1 study

2:00 pm Afternoon Networking Break

Assessing Practical Applications of Digital Pathology & AI to Advance Oncology Drug Development

3:00 pm Mastermind Session: What Other Tools Can We Implement to Empower Oncology Drug Development & Precision Medicine?

Synopsis

  • What are the potential opportunities of leveraging AI or mathematical modeling in drug development?
  • How can we use spatial biology & digital pathology to better identify patient populations?
  • Discussing how to use AI to inform model selection, empower target discovery and identification, and more

3:30 pm Leveraging Spatial Biology to Select the Right Tumor Models for Better Drug Development

Synopsis

  • Best practice to harness spatial biology tools including transcriptomics/proteomics/ multi-omics to improve understanding of your data read-outs
  • Best practice to integrate AI/ML with spatial omics to develop a better understanding of the tumor microenvironment
  • Leveraging spatial data to refine patient stratification methods and enhance the design of future clinical trials for improved treatment outcomes 

4:00 pm Chair’s Closing Remarks

4:05 pm End of 13th Tumor Models Summit Boston