Day Two

Achieving durable responses in patients remains one of the most important challenges for NK cell therapies. This panel will bring together leaders in academia, biotech, and clinical development to discuss strategies for boosting efficacy, extending persistence, and improving the therapeutic potential of NK-based treatments. Experts will explore how next generation engineering, manufacturing, and clinical insights are shaping the future of innate cell therapies.

• Understanding barriers to efficacy and persistence, examining tumor escape, immunosuppression, and NK cell exhaustion that limit clinical outcomes
• Advancing engineering solutions, exploring cytokine support, gene edits, and checkpoint resistance to strengthen NK cell function in vivo
• Improving translation to the clinic, aligning manufacturing, trial design, and biomarker strategies to achieve more consistent and durable responses

• Disarming immune suppression by engineering NK cells to resist inhibitory signals
• Overcoming NK cell-intrinsic checkpoints to boost NK metabolism and functional activity
• Combining multiplex base editing and CAR and cytokine engineering to enhance activity to antigen positive and negative tumors

Advancing NK-based therapies from preclinical proof-of-concept to meaningful clinical outcomes depends on identifying the right patients and monitoring their responses effectively. Predictive biomarkers, translational analytics, and innovative assay platforms are critical to reduce trial risk, guide dosing, and validate therapeutic mechanisms.

This workshop explores state-of-the-art strategies to integrate biomarker discovery and translational science into NK therapy development to de-risk programs and speed regulatory and clinical milestones.

Join this workshop to:

• Understand emerging biomarkers for patient selection, persistence, and therapeutic response in autoimmunity and oncology
• Explore cutting-edge analytical tools, single-cell sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, and functional NK assays to uncover actionable insights
• Review case-based examples of how translational strategies can refine trial design, optimize dosing, and improve go/no-go decisions

• Engineering NK cells with cytokine support to sustain proliferation and activity in hostile tumor environments
• Developing membrane-bound or controlled cytokine expression systems to avoid systemic toxicity while boosting local activity
• Advancing self-renewing NK platforms that maintain long-term cytotoxicity and persistence after infusion

• Developing safer and more effective CAR-NK therapies from cord blood to treat a range of cancers from lymphoma leukaemia to breast cancer
• Enhancing NK cell function through gene editing and checkpoint discovery
• Developing a concept of universal off-the shelf CAR NK product for a variety of tumors

• Profile of AlloNK, ability to deeply deplete B-cells, and potential advantages over other modalities
• Early clinical insights from ongoing clinical trials in autoimmune disease
• Process strategies enabling consistency and potency at scale

• Comparative analysis of NK cells derived from patient-matched induced pluripotent stem cells and peripheral blood to identify intrinsic phenotypic and metabolic differences
• Functional assessment of cytotoxicity and persistence to understand donor and source-dependent variability in NK cell performance
• Insights into how preclinical findings can guide optimization of cell sourcing, metabolic conditioning, and next-generation NK therapy design

• Will present clinical data consistent with SENTI-202 mechanism of action, including:
• CD33 OR FLT3 logic gated CAR approach for targeting both AML blasts and leukemic stem cell NOT EMCN logic gated inhibitory CAR approach for protection of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells
• Supporting data for SENTI-202 PK, patient disease characterization, and patient responses

• Developing strategies to enhance NK, persistence, migration, tumor-killing potential and improving safety profiles
• Exploring scalable platforms for making ex vivo cell manufacturing more efficient at reduced cost