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the official website of the antibody society

An international non-profit supporting antibody-related research and development.

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The Antibody Society at Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics 2018

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The Antibody Society held its 2018 annual meeting at Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics in San Diego on December 9-13. It was a a great opportunity for the board members and volunteers to meet our society members and provide updates on Society initiatives.

Informative keynote addresses were given by Prof. Andreas Plückthun (University of Zurich), Prof. David Baker (University of Washington), Prof. Rachael Clark (Harvard Medical School) and Dr. Badrul Chowdhury (Medimmune).

One of the highlights of the conference was the Antibodies to Watch in 2019 presentation by Dr. Janice Reichert (Executive Director of TAbS and Editor-in-Chief of mAbs).


The ‘Antibodies to watch in 2019’ paper is currently online in the accepted (manuscript) form. Society members will be informed when the final article, which will be open access, is available.

The Antibody Society booth at Antibody Engineering &Therapeutics

Winners of the Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics Student/Postdoc Poster Competition

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Congratulations to our winners!

To recognize the research activities of promising student and postdoctoral attendees of Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics, The Antibody Society sponsors a competition for our student/postdoc members who submit posters for display at the meeting. Our judges select the best work based on originality, relevance and perceived impact on the field of antibody R&D.

This year, our judges selected 3 student/postdocs winners who receive: 1) a complimentary registration to attend the conference and pre-conference sessions; 2) an opportunity to give a short oral presentation of their work in one of the conference sessions; and 3) support for travel expenses.

The winners of the contest are:

Madeleine Jennewein (Ph.D. candidate, Harvard University). Poster title: Trans-placental antibody transfer selects for highly functional antibodies

Junpeng Qi (Postdoctoral Associate, The Scripps Research Institute. Poster title: Potent and selective antitumor activity of a T cell-engaging bispecific antibody targeting a membrane-proximal epitope of ROR1

Pietro Sormanni (Borysiewicz Biomedical Sciences Fellow (postdoctoral), University of Cambridge). Poster title: Third generation antibody discovery: In silico rational design

Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics, the annual meeting of The Antibody Society, is managed by KNect365. The meeting will be held December 10-13, 2018 in San Diego, CA. Society members receive a 15% discount on the registration fee. Contact us at membership@antibodysociety.org for the code.

Like this post but not a member? Please join!

Sanne van de Bovenkamp wins The Antibody Society’s first Award for Excellence!

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Stimulating scientific exchange and education represent important aims of The Antibody Society. The Society therefore supports conferences in the antibody field through financial means and by providing scientific programming advice. The recognition of young and upcoming scientists with an Award for Excellence for best abstracts and presentations is a new Society initiative.

The Society’s first Award for Excellence was presented at the Waddensymposium, Antibodies: Central Players in Therapy and Disease, which was held June 25-26, 2018 in the remote town of Ouddorp in The Netherlands. An independent jury consisting of Prof. Stephen Beers (University of Southampton) and Dr. René Pfeiffle (University of Erlangen) selected Sanne van de Bovenkamp as the overall winner. The jury indicated that they were not only highly impressed by the quality of Sanne’s presentation but also by her demonstrated ability to engage in an insightful scientific discussion.

In her presentation, Sanne described her recent work on the impact of Fab-domain glycosylation in the adaptive antibody response. Her studies demonstrate that Fab-domain glycosylation is subject to clonal selection and impacts on antibody affinity. Sanne performed her graduate work at Sanquin Research with Dr. Theo Rispens.  She is currently a postdoc at the department of Immunohematology and Blood Transfusion at the Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden with Prof. Leendert Trouw. She is pictured here with Society Board of Director’s member Dr. Paul W.H.I. Parren and Prof. Beers.

Post-translational Modification in Antibody Function

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The Antibody Society is pleased to invite you to attend its annual Meeting, Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics, which will be held December 12-15, 2017, in San Diego, CA. We will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Society at the Society’s Special Session on Thursday December 14, 2017. In this session summary, Dennis R. Burton (The Scripps Research Institute) and Paul W.H.I. Parren (Leiden University Medical Center) discuss what you will learn in their session on post-translational modification in antibody function.

The critical importance of sequence variation in antibodies is well recognized. Sequence diversity in antibody variable domains is essential for specific antigen recognition while linkage to different constant domains leads to distinct Fc-mediated effector activities. Post-translational modifications (PTMs) of these domains provide an additional immune mechanism by which the binding and activity of antibodies can be modulated. PTMs vary from chain additions, such as N- and O-linked glycosylation, glycation, cysteinylation and sulfation; chain trimming, such as C-terminal lysine clipping; amino acid modifications such as cyclization (into a N-terminal pyroglutamic acid), deamidation, oxidation, isomerization and carbamylation; to disulfide scrambling of hinge region interchain disulfide bonds. Each antibody can therefore give rise to a myriad of distinct antibody molecules with large activity and potency differences. Although post-translational modifications of antibodies have been observed and studied for decades, we only now start to understand the full impact of this incredible microheterogeneity. PTMs have moved from being viewed as a mere nuisance to antibody manufacturing that requires controlling to a potential handle to modify and improve specific antibody functions.

In this session, we will hear about current state-of-the-art in PTM detection and novel insights into the role and modulation of PTMs in our immune system as well as the way in which we can exploit PTMs to make better (therapeutic) antibodies. The first and the second (after the break) part of our session will be initiated with lectures by renowned experts in their fields. Professor Albert Heck (Utrecht University) is a world-expert on the structural analysis of proteins by mass spectrometry. He received the Frank H. Field and Joe L. Franklin Award for outstanding achievement in mass spectrometry from the American Chemical Society and in 2017 he was received the NWO Spinoza Prize, which is the highest award in Dutch Science. Prof Heck will discuss how innovative and advanced mass spectrometry methods can be used to map antibody heterogeneity due to PTMs. Leendert Trouw (Leiden University Medical Center) will discuss the role of two amino acid modifications (citrullination and carbamylation) in the autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis (RA). On the one hand, the presence of antibodies against citrullinated or carbamylated proteins represents a prognostic marker for the disease. How antibodies recognize diverse antigens carrying these modifications is therefore an important area of study. Carbamylation of antibodies furthermore may also have functional consequences for antibody effector functions which will be highlighted. Professor Gerhard Krönke (University of Erlangen) will discuss how the PTM profile and inflammatory activity of autoantibodies in RA is regulated by TH17 helper T cells. His work gives us a novel insight into a mechanism by which the cellular immune system regulates the activity of antibodies and how its derailment may lead to the initiation of (autoimmune) disease.

After the break, Taia Wang (Stanford University School of Medicine) will discuss the diverse downstream proinflammatory, anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory consequences of the engagement of type I and type II Fc receptors, which are influenced by the Fc’s amino acid sequence and the complex, biantennary Fc-associated N-linked glycan, in the context of infectious, autoimmune, and neoplastic disorders. Yingda Xu (Adimab) will bring us back to the importance of PTMS in manufacturing and control of therapeutic antibody production. He will show novel data on the identification of chemically labile sites in antibodies and how this information may be used in therapeutic antibody lead selection. Finally, Raiees Andrabi (The Scripps Research Institute) will discuss how sulfation of residues in the antibody binding site is critical for certain broadly neutralizing anti-HIV-1 antibodies targeting the envelope glycoprotein.

We hope that this session will convey the current interest and high excitement in antibody PTMs and will serve to promote further research into the importance and impact of PTM microheterogeneity for polyclonal antibody responses as well as for monoclonal antibody therapeutics.

 

Interested in attending the meeting? Learn more from this PDF, which includes all session summaries written by the chairpersons.

Society members can save 15% on the registration fee! Not a member? Please join!

Membership is free for students and employees of the Society’s corporate sponsors.

 

 

Antibody-based innovations in the tumor microenvironment

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Please join us at the Society’s annual meeting, Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics on December 11-15, 2017 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, San Diego, CA!

Clinical successes of the checkpoint modulators have revived the ambition to cure cancer by manipulation of the tumor microenvironment, or by unleashing or even priming (novel) adaptive immune responses. Hence, understanding the tumor microenvironment is an increasingly vital theme in the field of antibody-based therapeutics. This theme is excitingly addressed during two sessions “Antibody-based innovations in the tumor microenvironment 1 & 2”, jointly chaired by Kerry Chester and Janine Schuurman, which will be held on Thursday December 14, 2017. The sessions’ antibody-focused complementary topics are intended to expand knowledge at the cutting edge of the tumor microenvironment field, and are anticipated to boost lively discussions and stimulate new lines of thinking.

Antibody-based innovations in the tumor microenvironment (I, morning session)

Chairwomen: Kerry Chester, Professor of Molecular Medicine, UCL Cancer Institute, University College London, United Kingdom, and Janine Schuurman, Vice President Research, Genmab, Utrecht, The Netherlands

The sessions will open with a presentation by John Anderson (UCL) who will examine current thinking on immune evasion as a hallmark of cancer and why the solid tumor microenvironment is particularly hostile to immunotherapeutic function of effector cells. He will explain that, unlike adult cancers, pediatric cancers generally arise with few mutations and tend to be insensitive to existing immune modulators. Treatment approaches designed to target cell surface antigens in combination with agents to reverse immune evasion are likely to be required for this special group of patients.  New data will be presented in support of this hypothesis.

Syd Johnson (MacroGenics) will then share data on how to achieve co-stimulation of immune cells specifically within the tumor microenvironment using bispecific Dual-Affinity Re-Targeting (DART) and TRIDENT antibodies that bind both tumor-specific antigens and T-cell costimulatory molecules. Importantly, tumor binding is required to trigger costimulation. The talk will be illustrated with a case study showing how to achieve optimal tumor dependent T cell engagement by varying the relative position and valence of each antibody binding site in the molecule; manufacturability, stability and PK will also be addressed.

Natalia Arenas Ramirez (University Hospital Zurich) will then present an elegant antibody-based solution to problems associated with IL-2 immunotherapy.  IL2 binding to the IL-2 receptor α (CD25) subunit leads to unwanted side effects, including stimulation of immunosuppressive Tregs.  The talk will describe development of NARA1, an anti-IL-2 monoclonal antibody that acts as a high-affinity CD25 mimic, preferentially stimulating CD8+ cells while keeping the Tregs low.  Potent antitumor responses are achieved.

After the Networking Break, Volker Schellenberger (Amunix) will present an interesting approach to achieving activation in the tumor environment using bispecific T-cell engagers based on the ProTIA (Protease Triggered Immune Activator) platform. ProTIA combines tumor binding, proteolytic activation and polymer targeting due to an attached XTEN. Amunix’ lead molecule, AMX-168, is expected to enter clinical development in 2018.

Next, Shautong Song (Icell Kealex Therapeutics) will showcase an innovative way to focus treatment within the tumor microenvironment via bi-specific T-cell engager-armed oncolytic vaccinia virus. The treatment has several modes of action: vaccinia virus can directly lyse tumor cells and bi-specific T-cell engagement directs T-cells to kill both tumor and by-stander cells. In addition, T-cell engagement promotes T-cell infiltration into tumors and the cytokines released upon activation create a pro-inflammatory microenvironment that inhibits tumor growth. The strategy provides a sophisticated means of reducing systemic side effects associated with bi-specific T-cell engagers.

To complete the morning session, Dane Wittrup (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will explore how classical monoclonal anti-tumor antibodies, such as anti-HER2 or anti-CD20, synergize with immune oncology antibodies, such as anti-PD-1. This is achieved not only by delivery of  tumor debris to antigen presenting cells for cross presentation, but also by creating a more inflammatory state and a localized cytokine storm in the tumor microenvironment.

Antibody-based innovations in the tumor microenvironment (II, afternoon session)

Chairwomen: Janine Schuurman, Vice President Research, Genmab, Utrecht, The Netherlands and Kerry Chester, Professor of Molecular Medicine, UCL Cancer Institute, University College London, United Kingdom

The afternoon session opens with a presentation centering on adaptive immune responses boosted by therapeutic cancer vaccines using RNA. Sebastian Kreiter (BioNTech) will focus on preclinical and clinical efforts to use personalized neoepitope vaccines in combination with immunomodulatory antibodies.

Edward Roberts (UCSF) will follow with a complementary line of thinking harnessing long term anti-tumor therapeutic effects. He will share data, including imaging data, to give us insights in the requirements for effective tumor antigen trafficking to the lymph nodes by the dendritic cells. These understandings may stimulate ideas for effective T cell priming approaches.

The TNFR super family (TNFR-SF) is a highly represented target class in the immunomodulatory targets space. Clustering is an important prerequisite for agonistic effects of antibodies against these targets. Nick Wilson (Agenus) will share emerging data on the role of antibody Fc and Fc-receptor biology to optimize the agonistic properties of antibodies against this target class.

Daratumumab, an anti-CD38 antibody that is approved for the treatment of relapsed / refractory myeloma, has multiple mechanisms of actions. Apart from rapid tumor cell reduction and direct anti-tumor effects, daratumumab significantly reduces CD38+ immune suppressive cells in the tumor microenvironment. Kate Sasser (Genmab) will focus on the immune modulatory activity of this antibody substantiated with data from in vitro evaluations and clinical studies.

Bispecific antibodies directed against both CD3and a tumor target can engage non-tumor-specific T cells, resulting in effective tumor-specific cell killing. Dirk Hose (Heidelberg University) will share data on a bispecific IgG-based molecule that targets CD3 and the B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA), which has been implicated in multiple myeloma. This presentation will cover the generation of this molecule and include early stage clinical learnings.

Anti-CD3 bispecifics can have severe toxicity profiles related to the expression profile of the tumor antigen. The last speaker of this full-day session on the tumor microenvironment will share data on the improvement of the therapeutic index of an anti-CD3 bispecific antibody also directed against a widely expressed antigen, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). In this case study, Leila Boustany, (CytomX) will present the localization of the activity to the tumor microenvironment, which is accomplished by an engineering approach, i.e., a protease activatable EGFRxCD3 bispecific exploiting the protease activity present in the tumor microenvironment.

We anticipate that these complementary scientific insights focusing around antibody-based innovations in the tumor microenvironment will excite us all and inspire our forward-looking capabilities.

Interested in attending the meeting? Learn more from this PDF, which includes all session summaries written by the chairpersons.

Society members can save 15% on the registration fee! Not a member? Please join!

Membership is free for students and employees of the Society’s corporate sponsors.