8:50 am Chair’s Opening Remarks
9:00 am The Importance of Different Vaccine Platforms, Neoepitope Selection & Clinical Trial design to Show Vaccine-induced Clinical Efficacy
Synopsis
- Exploring the contribution of TMB, heterogeneity and neoepitope quality parameters for successful outcomes
- Which patient populations could benefit from a neoantigen vaccine?
- What is the ideal combination strategy for neoantigen vaccines?
9:30 am The Impact of Stimulatory and Inhibitory Neoantigens Selected with the ATLAS Bioassay: Clinical and Pre- Clinical Results
Synopsis
- ATLAS identifies stimulatory and inhibitory CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses to neoantigens and common antigens
- Preclinical models show the deleterious impact of inhibitory T cell responses on anti-tumor immunity
- Be careful, common neoantigens may differ from common mutations
- The GEN-009 immunotherapy, designed with personalized ATLAS-identified stimulatory neoantigens has resulted in unprecedented breadth of immune response in the ongoing GEN-009 101 Phase 1/2a clinical trial
10:00 am What Does Brexit Mean for Production of Neoantigen Therapies?
Synopsis
- Different national agencies have different attitudes
- Make early contact with the regulator
10:30 am Morning Refreshments & Networking
11.30 High-affinity Neoepitope-Specific T cells Accumulate in Tumours
• NeoAg-specific CD8 T cells cover broad ranges of avidities (structural and functional)
• Unlike the functional avidity, the structural avidity of neoAg-specific CD8 T cells is higher than that of TAA-specific CD8 T cells
• CD8 T cells bearing high avidity TCR better upregulate tumor-homing receptors, infiltrate tumour and control tumours
Alexandre Harari, Group leader, Department of oncology UNIL CHUV, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Lausanne
12.00 Personalized Cancer Vaccines: Enhancing Neo-epitope Presentation
• Update on current personalized cancer vaccine clinical approach, successes and challenges
• Basic research approaches to enhance presentation of neo-epitopes via various cellular perturbations
• Show casing some high throughput targeted spectrometric tools for further characterizing epitopes for binding affinity various HLA allele and presentation
Jennie Lill, Senior Director of Proteomics & NGS, Genentech
12.30 Are Immunogenic Tumours the Best Targets of Tumour Vaccination?
- Identifying the best targets for tumour vaccination
- Tumour infiltration and PDL1expression to identify the tumours that are more sensitive to vaccines
- Assessing non immunogenic tumours
- Outlining considerations for the future of neoantigens
Kostas Kosmatopoulos, CEO, Vaxon Biotech
1:00 pm TG4050 : Viral immunotherapy meets AI technology
Synopsis
- TG4050 is based on a decade long expertise in designing viral vectors
- Viral immunotherapy constitutes a promising modality harnessing the natural sensitivity of immune system to virus to target cancer cells
- Viruses can be modified to alter their immunogenic properties and enhance anti-tumor activity
- A review of how different viruses can be combined to enhance immunogenicity and optimize lead time
13:30 pm Lunch
2:30 pm Nouscom Viral Vectored Vaccines Encoding Many Neoantigens Synergize With Immunotherapies Reverting Tumour Immune Suppression
Synopsis
- Nouscom Cancer vaccines targeting neoantigens:
- Rely on effective neoantigens prediction methods
- Can encode a large number of neoantigens
- Induce a robust neoantigens’ specific CD4 and CD8 T cell immunity
- Cure large established tumours in mice when combined with checkpoint blockade
3:00 pm Panel Discussion: Evaluating Combination Therapies
Synopsis
- The hasty evolvement of combination strategies
- Combinational therapies employing both neoantigen-based approaches and immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) are underway to overcome ICB-induced immune resistance and maximize antitumor immune activity
- Investigating the safety and efficacy of neoantigen vaccine therapy plus chemotherapy in adjuvant setting
- Discuss regulatory pathway and limitations to approve two new drugs
- How to identify a clear biologic effect caused by combination
- Improving Clinical Efficacy through Immunotherapy Combinations
3:30 pm Extrapolation of epitope prediction from IO onto infectious diseases (lessons learned)
Synopsis
- Differences and synergies between personalized/shared neoantigen identification, and target prediction for infectious diseases
- Exploration of different IO epitope prediction tools and their extrapolation capabilities for general infectious diseases
- Use case: designing an optimal construct for intranasal RNA-based SARS-CoV2 vaccine