Conference Day One | Wednesday, November 19
7:30 am Registration & Light Breakfast
8:30 am Chair’s Opening Remarks
Precision Strategies to Overcome Immune Suppression & Advance Myeloid-Targeted Therapies
9:00 am Targeting Myeloid Heterogeneity & Ferroptosis: Rethinking Suppression in Pre-Metastatic Niches
Synopsis
- Unpack the role of myeloid cell heterogeneity in shaping immunosuppressive premetastatic environments
- Explore ferroptosis as a regulatory mechanism of myeloid cell function and its therapeutic potential
- Assess implications for targeting suppressive myeloid populations early to prevent metastatic progression
9:30 am Fireside Chat: Emerging Single-Target Pathways & Immune Checkpoints in Myeloid Therapy
Synopsis
- Discover novel, single-agent targets beyond CD47 and TREM2 that are showing promise in myeloid-directed therapy
- Examine the functional diversity of myeloid checkpoints and their role in immune suppression and resistance
- Evaluate preclinical and translational evidence supporting these emerging targets for monotherapy or future combination strategies
10:00 am Morning Break & Speed Networking
Synopsis
As this community unites, this session will provide valuable networking time with your peers, enabling you to forge new and lasting connections.
Evaluating Advanced Models & Decoding Myeloid Heterogeneity for Improved Translational Predictability
11:00 am “Session Reserved” for GenOway
11:30 am Making Sense of the Myeloid Mess: Defining In Vivo Functional States & Translating them In Vitro
Synopsis
- Explore how transcriptomic and spatial profiling datasets inform the design of advanced in vitro systems that reflect the true heterogeneity of myeloid cells across disease contexts
- Emphasis on tools and platforms to recapitulate fibrotic environments ex vivo and allow robust readouts of myeloid cell behavior
12:00 pm Who to Treat, When to Treat? Biomarkers & Disease Stage in Myeloid Therapeutics
Synopsis
- The importance of disease staging and how improper patient stratification can affect the efficacy of certain drugs
- Understanding why some respond and some don’t, correlating TME features with clinical outcomes
- Single-cell and spatial insights into late-stage vs. baseline tumors
- Myeloid content and architecture as predictors of checkpoint response
12:30 pm Decoding Myeloid Cell State Heterogeneity in the Tumor Microenvironment to Improve Therapeutic Targeting
Synopsis
- Spatial, temporal, and phenotypic diversity of macrophages, neutrophils, dendritic cells
- Understanding why immunosuppressive TAMs or neutrophils vary so much across patients
- Highlighting the importance of longitudinal and spatial profiling to understand how heterogeneity helps shape therapy design
1:00 pm Lunch Break & Networking
Bridging the Academic Bench to Clinical Bedside Gap
2:00 pm Precision Reprogramming of Myeloid Cells to Remodel the Tumor Microenvironment
Synopsis
- Aligning priorities: discovery science vs. commercial deliverable
- Define shared metrics and ontologies for myeloid cell states, immune modulation, and target validation
- Explore actionable strategies to foster alignment in priorities, communication, and clinical translational goals
2:30 pm Translating CD24, From Academic Discovery to Phase I: A Clinical Update from Pheast Therapeutics
Synopsis
- Outline the scientific rationale and early discovery of CD24 as a novel target in myeloid-directed immunotherapy
- Describe key preclinical validation steps and strategies used to efficiently bridge into clinical development
- Share early clinical insights, regulatory milestones, and lessons learned from advancing CD24 into Phase I trials
3:00 pm Is Immunosuppression Really Immunosuppression & How is it Relevant to Cancer: A Novel Paradigm
Synopsis
- The role of chronic inflammation in cancer development when immunosuppression/ immunomodulation may be useful in cancer therapy
- The role of the retinoic acid-related orphan receptor gamma (RORy) in chronic inflammation, fibrosis and cancer
- Targetting RORy(Immunosuppression) is not really immunosuppression but immunomodulation and is potentially beneficial in addressing the TME
3:30 pm Afternoon Break & Poster Session
Synopsis
This is your opportunity to contribute to the conversation and share your cutting-edge research with this community while discovering exciting work carried out by your peers.
Translational Strategies for Myeloid-Directed Therapies to Establish Predictive Metrics & Unify Academia, Biotech & Pharma
4:15 pm Fireside Chat: Aligning Regulatory & Funding Strategies to Accelerate Myeloid Drug Translation
Synopsis
- What endpoints, comparators, and biomarkers regulators are prioritizing after a wave of failures in CD47, ILT, and TREM2-based programs
- How to structure early-phase trials and IND packages to manage risk, especially for novel myeloid reprogramming or depletion strategies
- What funders (VCs, pharma partners, government) need to see in terms of differentiation, scalability, and patient stratification to greenlight programs
5:00 pm Targeting Clever-1 in Macrophage-Driven Disease: Clinical Lessons from MDS & Beyond
Synopsis
- MDS and AML are cancers of the macrophage lineage, in which all cancer cells express Clever-1, a master receptor of immunosuppression on macrophages
- Targeting Clever-1 in MDS has proven extremely effective to overcome treatment resistance to standard of care agents
- Clever-1 is found on TAMs in a number of aggressive and treatment resistant cancers and targeting Clever-1 may prove beneficial to overcome treatment resistance in a number of different cancers