CONFERENCE DAY 2: OCTOBER 16

For full session details and more insights into the summit, explore the full 2025 event guide:

Conference Day Two

Thursday 16th October 2025

9:00 am Chair’s Opening Remarks

  • Mark Panzenbeck Senior Scientist - Discovery Immunology, Bristol Myers Squibb

Discovering New Biomarkers to Uncover the Power of Emerging Therapeutics

9:15 am Leveraging Novel MS Biomarkers to Decode Disease Heterogeneity & Treatment Response for Precision Therapeutic Development

Synopsis

  • Identifying novel MS biomarkers to predict individual risk, enabling personalized prevention strategies
  • Validating progression-linked biomarkers that track disease severity, to optimize treatment timing and selection
  • Linking biomarkers to therapeutic response for emerging drugs to accelerate clinical trial success and approval

9:45 am Discovering New Techniques to Measure Biomarkers in Spatial Models to Retain the Complex Cell-to-Cell Interactions while Predicting Effect

  • Soumya Mitra Senior Principal Scientist - Research, Abbvie

Synopsis

  • Determining real-time longitudinal assays with high sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratios to capture temporal changes in complex spatial models
  • Addressing the potential for spatial omics and histopathology of different models to measure biomarkers while preserving cellular architecture
  • Developing new methods for multi-timepoint biomarker detection to bridge traditional endpoints with spatial biology workflows

10:15 am Morning Refreshment Break & Networking

11:00 am Solving the Model-to-Human Biomarker Disparity to Validate Drug Response

  • Lauren Higdon Director of Biomarker and Discovery Research, Immune Tolerance Network

Synopsis

  • Evaluating the model biomarker readouts and human biomarker correlation to reliably predict human clinical response
  • Tackling the heterogeneric nature of autoimmune diseases to appreciate the biological influence towards biomarker discovery
  • Validating the reliability of preclinical biomarkers to verify the therapeutic efficacy

Leveraging Innovative Models to Understand Disease Mechanisms

11:30 am Interactive Workshop: Reducing Mechanistic Biases for Autoimmune & Inflammatory Models to Maximize Accuracy of Model Translatability

  • Soumya Mitra Senior Principal Scientist - Research, Abbvie
  • Aaron Winkler Senior Scientific Director, Immune Tolerance Lead, Pfizer
  • Thomas Sundberg Principal Scientist - Immunology Discovery, Johnson & Johnson

Synopsis

  • Evaluating the current approach to eliciting autoimmune pathology in models to highlight better methods of inducing autoimmune models
  • Highlighting experiences of correct depictions of autoimmune pathology to improve model translatability
  • Exploring novel approaches to inducing autoimmune models to counteract current industry biases

1:00 pm Lunch Break & Networking

2:15 pm Attenuating Immunogenicity During Preclinical Drug Testing to Provide Reliable Results

2:30 pm Dampening Immunogenicity of a Non-Human Protease to Induce Rapid, Deep & Sustained Catalytic Degradation of IgG in Autoimmune Disease

  • Erik Procko Director of Discovery, Cyrus Biotechnology Inc.

Synopsis

  • Training of accurate AI tools for immunogenicity engineering using Big Data mutational scans of HLA class II epitopes
  • Development of a bacterial IgG protease that rapidly and durably depletes antibodies in an animal models with quiet immunogenicity
  • Treatment of autoimmune disease in animal models that mimic autoantibody-driven disease in humans

3:00 pm Engineering Non-Human Proteins with Machine Learning to Reduce Immunogenicity

Synopsis

  • Demonstrate how AI-driven platforms can redesign bacterial-derived proteins to reduce immunogenicity and enhance therapeutic potential
  • Validating assays and strategies to reliably evaluate immunogenicity risks during drug development
  • Removing T-cell and B-cell epitopes to tackle stability and manufacturability

3:30 pm Chair’s Closing Remarks

  • Mark Panzenbeck Senior Scientist - Discovery Immunology, Bristol Myers Squibb

3:45 pm End of Conference Day Two