Explore the Agenda
8:00 am Check-In & Light Breakfast
9:00 am Morning Session
Exploring Antigen Selection To Highlight the Resulting Tolerogenic & Inflammatory Outcome for Strategic Disease Selection
Examine how antigens are processed and presented within the immune system, to clarify why some resulting epitopes promote tolerance while others provoke an inflammatory response, and build a shared understanding of the biology underpinning antigen selection to inform strategic disease selection.
This session will:
- Review the criteria currently used to identify a disease-relevant antigens
- Establish what distinguishes a well-characterized target from one that remains poorly understood
- Delineate which indications have the most studied and understood biological mechanisms, to critically assess antigen choices across different ASIT technologies
- Discuss how this underlying biology connects to mechanism-of-action of a drug in the clinic, to later develop more technical discussions in a common foundation, and prepare attendees to engage more critically with the antigen-specific sessions that follow
12:00 pm Lunch & Networking Break
1.00 pm Afternoon Session
Evaluating the Current Toolbox of Tolerance Biomarkers to Identify Preclinical & Clinical Markers for Mechanism of Action & Efficacy to Determine the Success of Tolerance Approaches
After 10 years, biomarkers of tolerance remain the field’s most persistent open question, and with several programs now advancing into later-stage trials, the pressure to resolve it is significantly higher. This session puts you in the room with the people wrestling with the same problem in their own program right now: to compare notes, stress test current approaches, and leave with sharper ideas to apply to your own biomarker strategy.
This session will:
- Examine why patient heterogeneity has made biomarkers so difficult to identify, to clarify why an unbiased broad search often loses signal in the noise, and understand why a more targeted approach may be needed
- Analyze candidate biomarkers already in use or under investigation, such as autoantibodies, cytokines, cell-free DNA, and TCR repertoire changes, to compare their relative strengths, limitations, and readiness
- Review how combining multiple biomarkers, and improving how quickly they can be read out, could strengthen confidence in a clinical endpoint to weigh this against the practical demands of trial timelines and investor expectations