8:00 am Morning Networking Coffee

8:50 am Chair’s Opening Remarks

  • Erin Trachet Senior. Director of Scientific Engagement, TD2

Translating Effective Combination Candidates Into the Clinic

9:00 am Panel Discussion: Exploring Strategies to Bridge the Translatability Gap to the Clinic

  • Sam Chatterjee Translational Scientist, Cell Therapy, Takeda
  • Aaron Goldman Instructor in Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School
  • Jia Li Associate Director, Takeda
  • Katie Grausam Postdoctoral Scientist, Cedards-Sinai Medical Center

Synopsis

• Addressing the need to fill the current gap with potential models with better translatability

• Assessing the computational approaches and analysis methods that can be used to improve translation into the clinic

• Manoeuvring the next steps needed to be taken to overcome these challenges, particularly to improve patient prediction outcomes

Moderated by: Katie Grausam, Postdoctural Scientist, Cedards-Sinai Medical Center

9:30 am Humanized Mice for Better Therapeutic Antibody Development

  • Mark Moore Chief Executive Officer, GemPharmatech

Synopsis

  • Humanized gene targets
  • Immuno Deficient Models
  • Human Antibody Producing mice

10:00 am Leveraging Reverse Translation to Improve Drug Combination Efficacy in the Clinic for Lung Cancer

Synopsis

• Strategizing learnings from the clinic and combining late-assets with approved drugs in a combination approach to improve efficacy

• Developing models that recapitulate patient vulnerability using clinical biomarker endpoints

• Implementing in vitro and mouse models to study patient drug resistant mechanism

10:30 am Syngeneic Model Analysis: How Implant Location and Tumor Heterogeneity Factor In

  • Justin Snider Assistant Director Scientific Development Assay Development (Research), Labcorp

Synopsis

• Exploring the effect that tumor location can have on tumor infiltrating immune cell subsets

• Exploring the differences between tumor infiltrating immune cell subsets from halved tumors (mean half 1 vs mean half 2)

• Exploring the differences between tumor infiltrating immune cell subsets from whole tumors or halved tumors (mean whole tumors vs mean tumor halves)

10:40 am Morning Break & Networking Session

Implementing Tumor Models for Drug Discovery & Screening

Track Chair: Katie Grausam, Postdoctoral Scientist, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

11:15 am Mastermind Session: Implementing Solid Tumor Models to Study CAR-T Therapy

Synopsis

• Assessing an ideal model to study CAR-T therapy in the context of solid tumors

• Overcoming challenges associated with CAR-T therapy toxicity

• Understanding the next steps to drive translation to patients

11:45 am Exploring Transcriptomic and Immunopeptidome Heterogeneity in Brain Tumor Models for Downstream Targeted Immunotherapies

Synopsis

• Understanding the ramifications of these datasets for baseline mutations and neoepitope discovery

• Leveraging data from mass spectrometry to compare the in vivo peptidome with computational modelling from sequencing

12:15 pm Comparing Mouse Models with the Patient Molecular Profile in Brain Tumors

  • Katie Grausam Postdoctoral Scientist, Cedards-Sinai Medical Center

Synopsis

• Exploring the distinctions between the different immune environments and different patient mutation profile

• Leveraging these insights to increase translation for treatments into humans

Implementing Tumor Models For Efficacy Evaluation & Biomarker Discovery

Track Chair: Erin Trachet, Senior Director of Scientific Engagement, TD2

11:15 am Maximizing Target Discovery for CAR-T Therapy – VIRTUAL

Synopsis

• Addressing off-target effects and increased toxicity in patients

• Honing current strategies for reliable CAR-T testing

11:45 am Implementing Combination Targeting to Improve Safety in Cell Therapy

Synopsis

• Honing gene-engineering to improve safety and specificity of CAR-Ts

• Discovering strategies to translate results into the clinic

12:15 pm Are Chemically Induced Mouse Models More Predictive of Efficacy?

Synopsis

• Spotlighting learnings from this model in ER-positive breast cancer

• Benchingmarking data against gold-standard mouse models and 2D data

• Strategies to translate these findings into the clinic

12:45 pm Networking Lunch

Assessing the Future for Tumor Models

1:45 pm In Vivo Expansion of CAR T Cells and its Association with Safety and Efficacy in Patients Treated with Tisagenlecleucel

  • Rakesh Awasthi Senior Principal Scientist, Pharmacokinetic Sciences, Oncology Clinical Pharmacology, Novartis

Synopsis

• Understanding in vivo expansion of CAR T cells

• Correlation of in vivo expansion with efficacy and safety endpoints such as cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and neurological events

• Exploring trends across indications (leukaemia and lymphoma)

2:15 pm Modelling the TME in a Tumoroid Model

Synopsis

• Evaluating strategies to recapitulate the TME within an organoid model system

• Implementing ex vivo modelling of TME to test cell-based cancer immunotherapies

2:45 pm Fireside Chat: The Future of Preclinical Tumor Models

Synopsis

• How can we use preclinical models to streamline drug development and make it more cost-effective?

• Highlighting the importance of optimizing translatability into the clinic – the next steps

• How can models be used in the context of precision oncology?

Moderated by: Katie Grausam, Postdoctural Scientist, Cedards-Sinai Medical Center

3:30 pm Spotlighting a Next-Generation Platform to Study Cell Therapy

  • Aaron Goldman Instructor in Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School

Synopsis

• Leveraging bioengineering, microfluidics and human ex-vivo tumors to model drug response and resistance mechanisms

• Deploying a comprehensive set of tools with ex-vivo platforms to efficiently study cell therapy including infiltration, immune response and activation of molecular pathways

4:00 pm Chair’s Closing Remarks & End of Summit

  • Erin Trachet Senior. Director of Scientific Engagement, TD2