De-risked, stage-appropriate design to select the right ADC candidate for your preclinical program.
Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are fast becoming an established class of biopharmaceuticals with therapeutic applications in oncology and beyond. ADCs combine a monoclonal antibody conjugated to a highly potent cytotoxic payload via a suitable linker, that targets an antigen expressed in certain cancer cells. Using antibodies to target conjugated highly potent cytotoxic payloads to tumor cells has proven an effective means of increasing efficacy while reducing safety issues associated with systemic chemotherapeutic approaches.
The design of ADCs is complex with interconnected components requiring optimization in parallel during the early development stage. To successfully meet the criteria of the drug Target Product Profile (TPP) an understanding of the risks and liabilities early in the design and development stages of the ADC is critical and allows modifications in the design before entering the more expensive stages of drug development.
Considering ADC developability early in drug development will reduce failure rates by providing multiple readouts that capture the fundamental characteristics of successful drug design: specificity, functionality/potency, safety, pharmacokinetics and manufacturability. This rational design and cascade approach allows the evaluation of all the ADC components in combination – antibody, linker and payload.
The webinar highlights the importance of de-risking ADC candidates, to support the generation of data for lead candidate selection through an ADC developability approach. Join this webinar for an overview of how to construct a lead ADC candidate, how to develop and apply suitable analytical workflows to select the best ADC lead candidate and considerations and mitigation of risks for overall best in class bioconjugate design.
The expert speakers will discuss the different requirements for optimising the right combination of ADC components and how the analytical and biological testing at the different preclinical stages can be applied to select the right antibody, linker and payload combination, such as:
· How to select the right antibody for ADCs
· Building and selecting the ADC lead candidate
· Analytical characterisation and evaluation of the desired ADC candidate
Register for this webinar to learn more about the drug development applications of ADC developability and hear about case studies which illustrate the approaches used to overcome challenges in their design and testing.
Presented by
Maryam Ahmadi, PhD,
Scientific Fellow, Bioassay
Dr. Maryam Ahmadi is a Scientific Fellow at Bioassay, at Abzena. With more than 8 years’ experience at Abzena, Maryam has special focus on designing and managing bespoke projects within bioassay, immunology and immune oncology. She has extensive experience in working with immune cells, and determining their functional activity in response to antigens, antibodies, antibody- drug conjugates and tumour cells. Her team has worked on departmental and cross-departmental projects to establish Cytokine Screen™ and EpiSCreen™ MAPPs assays. Prior to Abzena, Maryam worked as a postdoc at University College London, assessing TCR- transfected T cell efficiency in tumour cell lysis in human and murine tumour models. She has obtained her PhD in Tumour Immunology from University of Bristol, UK, on the effect of tumour cell- mediated immune cell inhibition. Maryam has experience in immunology, immunogenicity, immune oncology and bioassay.
Nicolas Camper, PhD,
Director, Chemistry
Dr. Nicolas Camper is Group Leader for Bioconjugation Chemistry at Abzena. His group focuses on the design and synthesis of antibody-drug conjugates with different combinations of conjugation technologies, linker designs and payloads for pre-clinical evaluation, helping Abzena’s clients establish Proof of Concept and select Lead Candidates for further development. Prior to his position at Abzena, Nicolas worked for PolyTherics where he was involved in the development of the ThioBridge® disulfide rebridging conjugation technology from the early stage. At PolyTherics, Nicolas led CMC efforts resulting in the manufacturing of the first ThioBridge® ADC. He holds a PhD from Queen’s University of Belfast, on the synthesis of bisphosphonate conjugates to antibody fragments for applications in oncology. Nicolas has experience in bioconjugation, protein engineering, protein expression in bacterial and mammalian systems as well as synthetic chemistry.
Campbell Bunce, PhD,
Chief Scientific Officer
Campbell is the Chief Scientific Officer at Abzena, a global Partner Research organisation supporting development of drugs and vaccines from discovery to GMP manufacture. His focus is in delivering high quality and tailored services to ensure a quick and de-risked route from drug concept and design to clinical testing. Campbell has been with Abzena for 5 years and beforehand spent 20 years working in the biotech sector for companies such as Cantab Pharmaceuticals, Piramed Pharma and Immune Targeting Systems. He has led the development of many novel vaccine and therapeutic technologies targeting infectious disease, cancer, inflammatory and autoimmune disease, taking them through discovery and design stages to clinical evaluation. Campbell has a PhD in Immunology from the University of Manchester and has published numerous papers on immune mechanisms and novel drug development.