8th Antibody Symposium
The 8th Antibody Symposium was held on 22 November 2021 in the form of a Zoom Webinar. Jointly organised by CPR, the National University of Singapore and A*STAR, this annual event brought together industry, academia and government to present the latest advances in antibody research and treatment.
Over 320 attendees comprising the research community, industry professionals and tertiary students participated in the full-day seminar.
Scientists from various institutions including CPR, A*STAR, ETH Zurich, The Pennnsylvania State University, Uppsala University and the Scripps Research (Florida Campus) shared their latest findings and discoveries on antibody treatments for infectious diseases.
The two speakers representing CPR were Dr Feng Shu and Dr Yoshinori Narita.
Dr Feng Shu leads the Lead Optimisation Unit and Automation & Data Management Unit at CPR. Her presentation “A Novel Next Generation T cell Bispecific Antibody Platform” outlined the findings of the protein engineering and pre-clinical results from her research. Dr Feng and her team had developed a novel T-cell bispecific platform that had superior anti-tumour efficacy to conventional CD3 T-cell redirect antibody with T-cell activation status and tumor microenvironment.
Dr Yoshinori Narita is a Senior Principal Scientist at the Oncology Pharmacology Unit at CPR. His presentation was titled “A Novel Tumor Selective Anti-CD137 Agonist Antibody Activated by Elevated Extracellular ATP In Tumor Microenvironment”. He shared his findings reported in Cancer Discov. 2021 on the STA551, a novel anti-CD137 agonist antibody that exerts agonistic activity selectively in tumors without on-target toxicity in non-tumor tissues, regardless of tumor-associated antigen expression. STA551 is currently being tested in a phase 1 clinical study.
