Dr. John Maher is a clinical immunologist and immunopathologist who leads the CAR Mechanics research group within King’s College London. His research group is focussed on the development of adoptive immunotherapy using CAR-engineered and gamma delta T cells. He is also chief scientific officer of a spin-out company named Leucid Bio. In addition, he is a consultant immunologist within King’s Health Partners and Eastbourne Hospital.

Dr. Riccardo Belli is currently the medical director of global clinical development at Novartis. He’s a DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) guest fellow at tumour immunology research group Campus Charite Mitte (Berlin), an EACPM member and an alumnus of the University of Basel. Riccardo is also a member of different scientific associations such as ESMO and EACR and an author of different abstract and manuscripts in immunology and immuno-oncology.

Dr. Ioannis Karydis developed an interest in immuno-oncology during his specialist training in the Oxford Cancer Centre in the UK. He went on to secure a clinical research fellowship in the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in the University of Oxford looking into mechanisms of tumour escape. After a further senior fellowship in the Oxford Early Phase Clinical Trials Unit, he was appointed associate professor in the University of Southampton, where his focus is on developing techniques for precision onco-immunotherapy. His particular area of interest is advanced immunometrics and its application to optimise output from early phase trials and guide combinatorial drug development.

Dr. Helen K. Angell received a first-class bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Manchester, with an industrial placement at MedImmune, Cambridge, and was awarded the Bioscience Horizons Young Scientist Award in 2008. She received a PhD entitled “Immune Modulation of the Tumour Microenvironment” from the University of Nottingham School of Pharmacy, funded by AstraZeneca and EPSRC. Dr. Angell then took a postdoctoral role with Dr. Jérôme Galon in the Laboratory of Integrative Immunology at the Cordeliers Research Centre, Paris. Here she contributed to the development and implementation of the “Immunoscore”. Her main research focus was the characterisation and phenotyping of immune subpopulations, cytokines, chemokines and tumour alteration, associated with CRC progression, recurrence and metastasis. In January 2014, Dr. Angell joined AstraZeneca’s iMed Oncology Translational Science and is now working as an associate principal scientist, driving strategies for segmentation of immunotherapy/ small molecule combination studies with the aim to enhance patient selection for clinical trials.

Dr. Elena Spanjaard is the global head of regulatory affairs at Celyad. Elena is responsible for the global regulatory strategies that support Celyad’s CAR-T product pipeline for solid tumours and hematological malignancies. Trained in immunology, she earned her PhD from Boston University School of Medicine and completed her post-doctoral training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Elena has held positions in academic and biopharma organizations supporting development of cell and gene therapies, biologics and small molecules for a wide range of therapeutic areas with a special focus in immuno-oncology.

Jun Wang, MD PhD, acts as senior medical director in the GI/Solid Tumour Combination team in the Cancer Immunotherapy Franchise from Genentech/Roche. Jun has more than 28 years of experience in oncology academics and pharmaceuticals in China, United States, United Kingdom, Singapore and Switzerland in varied roles, including 10 years as a colorectal surgeon, nine years as a medical oncologist in academic institutes or hospitals and nine years as a medical director in the pharmaceutical industry. Jun has been involved in designing and managing more than 20 oncology clinical trials in the industry and prior to this, he had led six multinational clinical trials in his academic time. He spent two years on the CART-19 program during his time in Novartis Oncology, involving the CART-19 leukaemia and lymphoma trial design and management, which led him to become a real practitioner in cancer immunotherapy.

In 2004, Sara Colombetti obtained a PhD degree in molecular and cellular biology at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan (Italy); her focus was the characterization of the molecular mechanisms of T biology. She then spent the next five years developing cancer CD8 T-cell vaccines based on lentiviral vectors and VLP technologies at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (Lausanne Branch) and at Cytos Biotechnology, respectively. In 2009, Sara joined Roche, where as leader of groups, she is responsible for preclinical model development and in vivo profiling of cancer immunotherapy. Since 2016, she has led the Department of Pharmacology, which is responsible for all preclinical in vivo studies run within the Oncology Discovery group, focussing on cancer immunotherapy approaches.

Dr. Alexander Sternjak works as a scientist at the department of Comparative Biological Safety Science at Amgen Research Munich. He is involved in the nonclinical characterization of bispecific T-cell engaging (BiTE®) antibody constructs. Prior to Amgen, Alexander was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology at the Charité in Berlin, analysing the role of regulatory T cells in rheumatoid arthritis. Alexander did his PhD at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, investigating the immunosuppressive mechanisms of regulatory T cells in autoimmune diseases. Before moving to Berlin, Alexander received a master’s degree in biology from the University of Vienna.

Geert C. Mudde received a PhD in immunology from the University of Utrecht in 1985 and started his international professional career at the Swiss Institute for Asthma and Allergy Research in Davos in 1989. In 1992, he joined the pharmaceutical/biotech industry, where he held several senior management positions at the Novartis Research Institute in Vienna, Austria, the Parke Davis Research Institute in Fresnes, France, Ingenium Pharmaceuticals, Martinsried, Germany, and Igeneon AG, in Austria. In 2006, while working at Baxter BioScience in Vienna on an interim basis, he co-founded the successful biotech company, F-star. Geert served as CSO until he started to focus on the development of the S-TIRTM technology platform, which is for human-specific therapeutic vaccines to treat severe allergies and cancer resulting in the foundation of S- TARget therapeutics GmbH in 2010, OncoQR ML GmbH in 2013 and TYG oncology Ltd. in 2013.

Dr. Agnete B. Fredriksen is the co-founder, president and CSO of Vaccibody AS. She holds a master’s and a PhD from the Institute of Immunology, Rikshospitalet Medical Centre in Oslo, where she designed and developed the first Vaccibody vaccines. Agnete is one of the inventors of the Vaccibody technology and received the King’s Gold Medal for her PhD thesis describing the first Vaccibodies. Her focus is on the improvement of cancer immunotherapy and moving innovative cancer vaccines from idea to clinical development. Her previous employment includes working at Affitech AS and Medinnova AS. Agnete is the author of numerous scientific papers in the field of immunology, immunotherapy and vaccines. She is an inventor and holds several patents in the field of immunotherapy. She is a board member for UIA of NRC, which stimulates research in the Norwegian industry. In Vaccibody, Agnete oversees all R&D including the neoantigen-based cancer vaccine program at Vaccibody.

Dr. Tomasz Lawniczek is a physician with 10 years of experience in clinical practice and academic research. He also has 18 years of experience in clinical development with a successful track record in drug development in both oncological and benign hematology with several compounds approved. Currently, Tomasz is the senior clinical development medical director at Novartis, where he is responsible for CAR T-cell therapies in haematological indications.

Viktoria Söderling joined Ridgeview in 2016 as part of an R&D collaboration with Uppsala University, Sweden. The focus of the collaboration was to investigate mechanisms for multiplexing in LigandTracer as a means to increase throughput and assay information content. She recently advanced into a user-oriented role at Ridgeview Instruments, where she is active in customer collaborations, contract research planning and direct sales across the EU, with a particular focus on Scandinavian countries. Viktoria holds a master’s in biochemistry from Uppsala University.