29th - 30th January 2025 | ExCeL, London
DRUG DISCOVERY STAGE
Harnessing our understanding of the genome to open a realm of new drug modalities
Explore the development of new drug modalities, such as immunotherapy and PROTACs, with a focus on navigating safety, clinical trials and addressing off-target effects in drug discovery.
DAY 1
Day 1 on The Drug Discovery Stage will focus on Cancer Vaccines, Nucleic Acid Based Therapies and PROTACs
[topic] CANCER VACCINES
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Personalised Cancer Vaccines using DNA & Viral Vaccine Platforms
- DNA vaccines targeting novel cancer-associated antigens
- Overcoming immune suppressive features of the tumour microenvironment
- Phase I/II trials of using the DNA vaccine platform
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Developing a First Ever Early-Stage Lung Cancer Vaccines (LungVax)
- How is personalized healthcare transforming precision medicine, and what impact does it have on treatment outcomes and patient safety?
- What are the key challenges and opportunities in integrating multi-omics data (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, etc.) for more accurate diagnostics and tailored therapies?
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What ethical and regulatory considerations must be addressed to ensure the responsible implementation and equitable access to personalized healthcare and multi-omics diagnostics?
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NHS England Accelerating Research into Cancer Vaccines
- Overview of the Wessex cancer genetics mainstream programme
- Supporting and developing resources for cancer clinicians (surgical and oncology)
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[break] Lunch
- Exhibition Floor : Wander around the vibrant exhibition floor to see the latest technologies and services on offer
- Food Options : Grab a sandwich at The Tree of Life Cafe or head on over to the Food Village for a range of hot food options including Indian, Jamaican and Japanese food
- Live Lounge Over Lunch : 15 mins technology focussed presentations
- Poster Zone : Browse the posters and reach out to potential new collaborators
- Talkaoke : The Flying Saucer of Chat, a fun and interactive pop-up show that offers you the opportunity to sit down with others and discuss any topic you like.
- Patient Perspectives: Talks and discussions on the crucial role of patients and patient families in the understanding and development of treatments for rare diseases.
[topic] NUCLEIC-ACID BASED THERAPIES
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Long Non-Coding RNAs in Monitoring Drug Response in Cancer
- Epigenetic and transcriptional regulation of lncRNAs
- Early diagnosis of cancer through RNA biomarkers
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Monitoring drug response for personalised medicine
Speaker
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Computational Methodologies Driving RNA Targeting Small Molecules
- RNA structure evaluation to target the small molecules
- Benchmarking RNA structure prediction methods
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Applications in respiratory and immunology pipelines
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Designing Efficient, Manufacturable & Safe mRNA Therapeutics
- Ideal mRNA Therapeutics need to efficiently deliver their intended protein cargo, without activating adverse biological responses, and while being amenable to manufacturing using current industrial in vitro transcription approaches
- Finding sequences that combine all these properties is challenging, given the very large number of possible RNA sequences that can encode any given protein
- Bioinformatics approaches can be used to encode our current knowledge of RNA Biology, allowing the reliable design of high-performing RNA Therapeutics sequences
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[break] Break
- Speed Networking: Fun and useful sessions where you’ll rapidly meet other Festival attendees to immediately expand your network.
- Food Options : Grab a coffee and a cake at The Tree of Life Cafe or head on over to the Food Village for a range of hot food options including Indian, Jamaican and Thai food
- Exhibition Floor : Wander around the vibrant exhibition floor to see the latest technologies and services on offer
- Talkaoke : The Flying Saucer of Chat, a fun and interactive pop-up show that offers you the opportunity to sit down with others and discuss any topic you like.
[topic] PROTACS
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Drug Target Discovery for PROTACs
- "Overview of PROTAC campaigns Technology and assays used for PROTACs in drug discovery
- Key data packages to drive PROTACs to the clinic
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Investigating the Therapeutic Potential of PROTACS in Multiple Myeloma
- Utilising novel PROTACs/protein degraders and small molecular inhibitors to kill Multiple Myeloma cells and circumvent macrophage-driven therapy resistance
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Jekyll And Hyde: A Molecular Glue Stem Cell Therapy Hijacked By E3 Ligase Cancer Mutations
- Stem cell therapy UM171 forms a molecular glue enabling KBTBD4 to recruit LSD1-HDAC-CoREST complexes as neo-substrates for ubiquitination and degradation
- By molecular mimicry, oncogenic mutants of KBTBD4 elicit similar neomorphic activity to drive stem cell expansion in medulloblastoma
Speaker
Professor of Structural and Chemical Biology, Centre for Medicines Discovery
University of Oxford
DAY 2
Day 2 on The Drug Discovery Stage will focus on Advanced Therapies as well as Regenerative Medicine.
[topic] ADVANCED THERAPIES
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Revealing the Landscape of Kidney Disease: a Multiomic & Spatial Approach to Renal Pathology
- Our current understanding of renal pathology is largely based on histological descriptors. As a consequence, for many kidney diseases, our diagnostic classifications do not adequately predict progression or response to treatment. To address this, and understand cellular disease mechanisms that can reveal new therapeutic targets, we need a new approach to interrogate renal disease at the cellular level.
- By integrating snRNA-seq and spatial methods in renal immune complex disease we can start to identify disease associated genes and pathways in tissue context. These insights provide a basis for functional validation, and potential integration into scalable clinical diagnostic and prognostic tools.
- New subcellular resolution spatial transcriptomics tools present new challenges in cell deconvolution and annotation. We have developed a topological data analysis approach to dynamically utilise the local transcriptomic context, and show that we can perform more accurate cell deconvolution across spatial platforms and tissues.
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Pooled CRISPR Screening: Unlocking New Target Opportunities In Oncology
- Democratizing access to cutting-edge functional genomics capabilities
- Faster, more efficient CRISPR screening with smaller
- Libraries
Information rich phenotypes for enhanced target understanding
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Dark Genome – Regulation of Genome Organization and Stability in Pluripotent Embryonic Stem Cells
- Non-coding genome, also known as the Dark Genome, composes ~98% of the genome and is responsible for the maintenance of genome stability and architecture.
- During embryonic development, the dark genome is regulated so that different cell states derive from pluripotent stem cells while ensuring genome stability.
- These regulatory processes that naturally occur during pluripotency transition are dysregulated during tumorigenesis.
- Identification of the molecular mechanisms underlying these processes offers the potential for novel biomarkers for embryonic fitness and for detection of early tumorigenesis.
Speaker
Honorary Research Fellow | Project Research Scientist
Imperial College London | The Francis Crick Institute
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[break] Lunch
- Exhibition Floor : Wander around the vibrant exhibition floor to see the latest technologies and services on offer
- Food Options : Grab a sandwich at The Tree of Life Cafe or head on over to the Food Village for a range of hot food options including Indian, Jamaican and Japanese food
- Live Lounge Over Lunch : 15 mins technology focussed presentations
- Poster Zone : Browse the posters and reach out to potential new collaborators
- Talkaoke : The Flying Saucer of Chat, a fun and interactive pop-up show that offers you the opportunity to sit down with others and discuss any topic you like.
[topic] REGENERATIVE MEDICINE
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The Use of in-vitro Modified Mesenchymal Stromal Cells to Deliver Highly Potent Immunosuppressive Activity
- Techniques employed to modify MSCs in vitro, maximizing their ability to deliver potent immunosuppressive effects, which is instrumental in promoting tissue repair strategies for optimizing the delivery, monitoring, and safety of modified MSC-based immunosuppressive treatments hurdles in translating in-vitro findings to clinical applications
Speaker
Professor, Vice Dean (International) and Head of Regenerative Medicine
King's College London
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The Role of Skin Mesenchymal Stromal Cells in Chemotherapy Response of Acute Myeloid Leukemia-Initiating Stem Cells
- Skin mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) provide a protective niche for acute myeloid leukemia (AML)-initiating stem cells, shielding them from external stressors, including chemotherapy.
- The interaction between AML stem cells and skin MSCs contributes to the development of chemotherapy resistance, allowing leukemia-initiating cells to survive and potentially relapse after treatment.
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Understanding the role of skin mesenchymal stromal cells in supporting AML stem cells can lead to the development of targeted therapies that disrupt this protective niche, enhancing the effectiveness of chemotherapy.
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Regenerative Potential of Stem/Stromal Cells
- Current progress in mesenchymal stem/stromal cell research in COPD, Muscle Wasting & Cancer
- Impact of pro- and anti-inflammatory signals on neural stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells and cancer stem cells Increasing the regenerative potential of autologous, tissue-resident stem cells by manipulating the inflammatory balance
- Developing robust potency assays
Speaker
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[break] Break
- Speed Networking : Fun and useful sessions where you’ll rapidly meet other Festival attendees to immediately expand your network.
- Food Options : Grab a coffee and a cake at The Tree of Life Cafe or head on over to the Food Village for a range of hot food options including Indian, Jamaican and Thai food
- Exhibition Floor : Wander around the vibrant exhibition floor to see the latest technologies and services on offer
- Talkaoke : The Flying Saucer of Chat, a fun and interactive pop-up show that offers you the opportunity to sit down with others and discuss any topic you like.
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Theatre Closed