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0:00
My name is Paul Parren,
and this talk will
be on bispecific
and multispecific antibodies
in biotherapeutic drug design.
0:10
This slide summarizes
my career path
and shows my disclosures.
I've been working on
antibody structure-function
relationships
and their translation
into therapeutics,
both work in academia
as head of R&D
and as a science
entrepreneur in industry
for almost four decades.
0:26
In my research, I'm
inspired by nature
and the power of
our immune system,
curious to understand basic
immunological principles
and to translate these insights
into practical applications,
into innovative technologies,
and therapeutic
antibody products.
0:44
Being inspired by
nature, for me,
means investigating
immunological mechanisms
at the molecular level,
which allows us to
make use of solutions
for therapeutic drug
design that have evolved
over hundreds of
millions of years.
These insights are the
basis of the ideas
that form the roots for new
technologies and therapeutics.
Drug development is always
a collaborative effort,
where teams in academia and
companies can work together
to generate new
research avenues,
scientific
publications, patents,
and finally, innovative
therapeutics
for patients who need them.
1:19
Antibodies represent one
of the most versatile
and successful categories
of protein therapeutics,
but currently, 178 antibodies
approved worldwide
for treating a wide
range of human diseases.
Initially, we mostly
developed antibodies with
the canonical structure shown
in the middle of this slide,
so antibodies with a regular
IgG1-like architecture.
More recently, the therapeutic
landscape has evolved
to create empowered antibodies
that are more potent,
or have optimized or
novel functionalities.
This is needed for
developing treatments
for patients who are refractory
or resistant to
current therapies,
to develop novel therapeutics
in a competitive market,
and also to be able to address
specific pathological niches,
like the tumor microenvironment
or the diseases of the brain.
These empowered formats
include bispecific,
multispecific and avidity
engineered antibodies,
shown on the left of this slide,
and drug-conjugated antibodies,
fusion proteins and
radiolabeled antibodies,
shown on the right.
This talk will focus on
the former categories.
