Min Bao
Chief Medical Officer & Co-Founder Kali Therapeutics
Seminars
T-cell engagers have demonstrated remarkable potency in oncology, but in autoimmune diseases they aim to achieve sufficient target-cell killing without triggering cytokine release profiles that are unacceptable in chronic outpatient populations. This technical workshop will explore the molecular architecture, construct design, and developability considerations that underpin next generation autoimmune TCEs by:
- Evaluating CD3 tuning as a molecular design strategy rather than a clinical mitigation tool, examining how affinity modulation, epitope selection, valency, and spatial geometry influence T-cell activation thresholds
- Identifying the structural determinants of efficacy-versus-cytokine separation, to understand construct formats that may uncouple cytotoxic activity from systemic T-cell hyperactivation
- Optimizing engager architecture for autoimmune applications, exploring how binder orientation, domain arrangement, linker design, avidity effects, and target-antigen biology influence immune synapse formation, pharmacology, and safety outcomes
As the first generation of autoimmune T-cell engagers advances through clinical development, the field is beginning to generate critical insights into safety management, depth of immune-cell depletion, patient selection, and long-term disease control. The key challenge now is determining which clinical learnings will truly differentiate successful therapies. Join clinical leaders, translational scientists, and developers of leading autoimmune T-cell engager programs as they discuss how emerging clinical evidence is reshaping drug design and development strategies by:
- Defining the clinical benchmarks for success, evaluating what early efficacy, safety, cytokine release syndrome, and durability data reveal about the therapeutic potential of T-cell engagers across different autoimmune diseases and patient populations
- Understanding the drivers of durable immune reset, exploring how depth of depletion and target biology, contribute to longterm remission, and identifying the biomarkers needed to predict sustained clinical benefit
- Translating clinical learnings into next-generation molecule design, discussing how insights from first-wave programs are informing improvements in target selection, construct engineering, dosing strategies, administration routes, and patient monitoring to enhance efficacy while minimizing treatment burden and safety risks
