Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics, the largest meeting devoted to antibody science and technology and the annual meeting of The Antibody Society, will be held in San Diego, CA on December 11-15, 2016. Each of 14 sessions will include presentations by leading industry and academic experts. In the meeting preview found here, the session chairs discuss the relevance of their topics to current and future antibody therapeutics development. Session topics include bispecifics and designer polyclonal antibodies; antibodies for neurodegenerative diseases; the interface between passive and active immunotherapy; antibodies for non-cancer indications; novel antibody display, selection and screening technologies; novel checkpoint modulators / immuno-oncology; engineering antibodies for T-cell therapy; novel engineering strategies to enhance antibody functions; and the biological impact of Fc receptor engagement. The meeting will open with keynote speakers Dennis R. Burton (The Scripps Research Institute), who will review progress toward a neutralizing antibody-based HIV vaccine; Olivera J. Finn, (University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine), who will discuss prophylactic cancer vaccines as a source of therapeutic antibodies; and Paul Richardson (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute), who will provide a clinical update on daratumumab for multiple myeloma. In a featured presentation, a representative of the World Health Organization’s INN expert group will provide a perspective on antibody naming. In addition, two pre-conference workshops covering ways to accelerate antibody drugs to the clinic and the applications of next-generation sequencing in antibody discovery and engineering will be held on Sunday December 11, 2016.

“Antibodies to watch in 2017” and progress on The Antibody Society’s 2016 initiatives will be presented during the Society’s special session on Wednesday, December 14, 2016. Janice Reichert, Executive Director of The Antibody Society, will recapitulate the approvals granted for antibody therapeutics in 2016 in the United States or European Union, and summarize the “Antibodies to watch” in 2017, i.e., monoclonal antibodies in regulatory review and those with Phase 3 clinical studies due for completion in 2017. She will also briefly discuss the Society’s initiative to address questions surrounding the World Health Organization’s international non-proprietary naming system.
Andrew Bradbury (Los Alamos National Laboratory), a member of the Society’s Board of Directors, will then review progress made during 2016 on the Society’s initiative to address issues related to antibody reagent reproducibility. In collaboration with the Global Biological Standards Institute, the Society organized the workshop “Research Antibodies: Solutions for Today and Tomorrow”, held at Asilomar in September 2016, with the goals to: 1) identify a set of standards to validate research antibodies, including recommendations for adoption by academia, industry, funders, and journals; 2) develop recommendations for an independent proficiency certification system or open access user ratings service; and 3) develop recommendations, timeline, and follow-up plan for the introduction of sequenced recombinant antibodies as research reagents. Dr. Bradbury will discuss the recommendations and conclusions that resulted from the Asilomar meeting and future plans for this initiative.
The Society supports the Adaptive Immune-Receptor Repertoire (AIRR) Community in developing recommendations for: 1) a common repository for AIRR sequence data, 2) minimal standards for publishing and depositing AIRR sequence data, and 3) resources and guidelines for the evaluation of molecular and statistical methods for AIRR sequence data, which were discussed at a workshop held at the National Institutes of Health’s Fishers Lane Facility in Rockville, MD in June 2016. Jamie K. Scott (Simon Fraser University),  a member of the Society’s Board of Directors, will provide an update on progress in these areas, and she will discuss future plans for this initiative.

Members of The Antibody Society receive a 15% discount on registration for this meeting! Contact us at membership@antibodysociety.org for the code. We look forward to seeing you in San Diego in December.

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