Bethany Mattson
Director, Innovative Medicine Oncology Johnson & Johnson
Seminars
Wednesday 29th July 2026
Overcoming the Limits of Humanized & Syngeneic Models to Better Assess Immuno-Oncology Candidates & Combination Strategies
9:00 am
- Discussing the feasibility challenges of humanized systems, from rebuilding balanced immune compartments to navigating cytokine driven xenoreactivity and the impact on interpreting safety and tolerability
- Spotlighting when humanized (CD34+) versus syngeneic models best capture T-cell biology, revealing where each system succeeds and falls short to model PD L1 mediated resistance, effector function enhancement and durability
- Demonstrating how combination strategies are stress tested across models, highlighting why checkpoint blockade requires pre-existing T-cell infiltration, where costimulation excels, and how model choice shapes translational confidence
