Empowered Antibody Therapies

Building upon the success of last year's conference, the 2010 "Empowered Antibody Therapies" conference continued to deliver multiple strategies and case studies for enhancing and modifying antibodies.

The conference started off with a session titled "Engineering Bispecific and Multispecific Molecules" which was punctuated by an excellent presentation from Justin Scheer of Genentech who provided some very interesting biological data on a bispecific antibody project.

A parade of speakers discussed novel conjugation strategies, antibody-drug conjugates in clinical development as well as new frontiers emerging for empowering the next generation of antibody drugs. A continuing theme of the conference continued to be how to incorporate the learning from current clinical development projects into strategies to inform future clinical development.

Next Generation Sequencing & Genomic Medicine Applications Summit

IBC's 1st Next Generation Sequencing & Genomic Medicine Applications Summit kicked off with a bang as numerous presenters discussed emerging applications of sequencing in cancer genomics. Attendees praised the exciting science and new data presented by Hanlee Ji of the Stanford Genome Technology Center, John Carpten of Ten and others.

Highlights of the conference included a session on Immunogenetics and Next-Generation Sequencing featuring Nobel Prize winner Andrew Fire, Christopher Carlson and Henry Erlich and a plenary panel discussion on the topic of Personalizing Cancer Medicine and Personalizing Genomes featuring Elaine Mardis, Lynda Chin, David Heimbrook, Mao Mao and James Lupski.

A consensus from speakers and attendees alike was that new data from next-generation sequencing projects will continue to emerge at a blistering pace, and that next year's event will be an exciting venue to continue this discussion of new applications.

Cancer Genomics & Cancer Mutations

Cancer Stem Cells & the Tumor Microenvironment

Thought leading cancer researchers from both academic and industry convened for IBC's two co-located cancer meetings - Cancer Genomics & Cancer Mutations and Cancer Stem Cells & the Tumor Microenvironment to explore novel discovery strategies, cancer mechanisms, and opportunities to improve drug /diagnostic development and patient care at the bedside.

Jeffrey Pollard from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine kicked off a session on mechanism of tumor promotion by inflammatory cells that led into several presentations describing new drugs targeting the tumor microenvironment and the inflammatory component of tumors. Several speakers discussed the latest progress in cancer stem cell research including updates on compounds in preclinical and clinical development.

The growth of interest in cancer genomics was apparent as several discussions ensued concerning the new targets, pathways and mutational studies emerging from cancer genomic studies.