Conference Day One - Wednesday | July 10, 2024

7:50 am Check-In & Coffee

8:50 am Chair’s Opening Remarks

  • Adrian Bot Chief Scientific Officer, Capstan Therapeutics

Evaluating Promises & Challenges to Propel In Vivo Approaches as the Definitive Solution

9:00 am Industry Leader’s Fireside Chat: Supercharging In Vivo as the Frontier of Cell Therapy & Comparing to Ex Vivo

Synopsis

  • Accentuating the bottlenecks of ex vivo therapies, such as the need for costly manufacturing processes and limited access, to consider the need to move towards a new engineering technique
  • Championing in vivo therapies by highlighting the solutions they could bring to the ex vivo cell therapy and gene editing field
  • Reaffirming the shift of interest towards in vivo therapies as the reality of clinical progression comes to the forefront

10:00 am Morning Break

Optimizing Target Specificity to Minimize Off-Target Toxicity & Prioritize Safety, Allowing Progression Towards Clinics

11:00 am Panel Discussion: Improving Target Specificity by Reviewing Methods to Reduce Off-Site Effects & Innovations Needed to Increase Target Precision

  • John Zuris Director, Delivery & Editing Technologies, Editas Medicine
  • Maggie Bobbin Director, Editing Technologies, Specificity & Safety, Mammoth Biosciences
  • CΓ©cile Bauche Chief Scientific Officer, Alaya.bio

Synopsis

  • Identifying challenges in target specificity to collaboratively review current techniques
  • Assessing the advantages and disadvantages of each method to improve target specificity
  • Planning for future improvements and driving new innovations to elevate target specificity

Focusing on Gene Editing in the Liver & Other Tissues, & Cell Engineering Beyond Oncology

11:30 am Developing In Vivo Editing To Target HSCs

  • Kyle Trudeau Senior Director, Co- Head of Innovation, Sana Biotechnology

Synopsis

  • Describing how Sana’s Retargetable Fusogen platform directly couples receptor recognition to cell entry, in contrast to endosomal escape delivery systems, enabling high on vs. off-target cell specificity in vitro and in vivo
  • Showing development of a T cell-specific fusogen to enable in vivo CAR-T therapy
  • Highlighting data showing the progression of HSC in vivo gene editing using a virus-like particle (VLP) system

12:00 pm Lunch Break & Networking

Finding the Balance Between Efficacy & Toxicity to Secure Safe & Promising Outcomes

1:00 pm Examining Efficacy of In Vivo Treatments & Sharing Pre-Clinical Data

Synopsis

  • Addressing clinical CAR-T indications, efficacy signals, the need for lymphodepletion, effective doses, toxicities, and correlatives (integrations per cell, durability, exhaustion etc.)
  • Evaluating the performance of in vivo generated CAR-T cells in well-known pre-clinical models to allow us to predict likely clinical superiority

1:30 pm Exploring How Efficacy & Toxicity Link with Drug Exposure

Synopsis

  • Understanding connections between increased drug exposure and increased efficacy in models
  • Discussing the optimal drug exposure to balance off-site toxicity with increased efficacy

2:00 pm Afternoon Break & Speed Networking

Synopsis

As this community re-unites for the third time, this session will provide valuable networking time with your peers, enabling you to forge new and lasting connections.

Discussing Innovations in Platform Development: CAR-M Therapies & Administration Methods

3:00 pm Reprogramming Myeloid Cells for Cancer: CAR-M from Ex Vivo to In Vivo

Synopsis

  • Targeting macrophages with CARs for solid tumors
  • Investigating pre-clinical and clinical data with ex vivo CAR-M cell therapies
  • Describing our in vivo CAR-M platform that is being developed in partnership with Moderna

3:30 pm Lessons Learned from Intravenous Administration of Gene Delivery Vehicles for In Vivo Cell Engineering

Synopsis

  • Exploring intravenous administration of gene delivery vehicles to inform the development of in vivo CAR-T
  • Scaling the manufacturing of products for intravenous administration
  • Examining the role of synthetic biology to achieve the targeting precision required for in vivo cell engineering

4:00 pm Chair’s Closing Remarks

  • Adrian Bot Chief Scientific Officer, Capstan Therapeutics

4:10 pm End of Conference Day One