Institute for International Research

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IBC's 3rd Annual Beyond Antibodies Conference welcomed 120 participants to the beautiful Estancia La Jolla Resort and Spa in San Diego for two days of presentations and networking to discuss the latest scaffolds, enabling technologies and clinical progress of non-traditional antibodies, antibody fragments and other alternative antibody formats. Starting with the pre-conference workshop "Enabling Technologies for Advancing Biologics Towards the Clinic" moderated by Gregory Weiss of U.C. Irvine, it became very clear that participants and speakers of the meeting would be both inquisitive and forthcoming about strategies being used in this emerging field. Almost every presenter at the conference happily fielded 4-5 questions from the audience which resulted in a very robust forum of sharing, debate, discussion and discovery for all involved.

Peter Hudson of CSIRO's keynote presentation kicked-off the main conference set the stage for the drivers for the development of antibody alternatives. Other conference sessions discussed a wide variety of topics from exciting new scaffolds and formats, the hot topic of immunogenicity, and also revealed the progress of some of the antibody alternatives furthest along in the clinical development pathway. The conference closed with a very interesting panel discussion which highlighted strategies and drivers for M&A in the antibody space, using GSK-Domantis and Adnexus-BMS as case studies.

Given the outstanding interactions during conference sessions, it was no surprise that the coffee breaks, lunches and cocktail reception were all characterized by constant networking, lively poster discussions and opportunities to meet new colleagues and friends. It is very clear that a wonderful community has developed over the past three years for this event and we look forward to continuing to build this community as we plan the program for this event in 2009.