In-silico Immunogenicity Predictions (Hands-on) Workshop*

SUNDAY APRIL 7, 2:30 - 5:30 PM (Federal Complex)

Instructors:

Vinodh B. Kurella, PhD, Principal Scientist, Protein Engineering, Merrimack Pharmaceuticals

Daron Forman, PhD, Principal Scientist, Molecular Discovery Technologies, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Short Course Description:

Computational immunogenicity predictions for antibodies as well as pathogens help in the rational design and re-engineering. This facilitates to minimize anti-drug antibodies (ADA) as well as better vaccine design. Latest in-silico tools can shorten the process from design to preclinical validations.

Topics to be covered:

• Computational prediction for T cell and B cell epitopes from primary sequences
• Antigen structure prediction via protein homology model
• Structure or homology model-based Vaccine/antigen design
• Structural differences between MHC-I and MHC-II binding
• MHC class I and MHC class II predictions from peptide sequences
• Overview on the latest immunogenicity prediction programs

*All materials, including tutorials/exercises, will be available for users during and after the workshop. No prior programming experience necessary. Please bring your laptop for the workshop.

Meet the instructors:

Vinodh B. Kurella, PhD, Principal Scientist, Protein Engineering, Merrimack Pharmaceuticals

Vinodh Kurella is a protein engineer with a focus on antibody and antigen designs via structure guided computational modeling-based approach. Before joining Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, he was team lead for CAR-T designs, engineering and validations in the Immuno_Oncology division at Intrexon Corporation. He completed his post-doctoral training at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical school in Dr. Wayne Marasco laboratory and received Ph.D. in Dr. David Worthylake lab from Dept. of Biochemistry at LSU Health Sciences Center in the field of protein X-ray crystallography.

Daron Forman, PhD, Principal Scientist, Molecular Discovery Technologies, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Daron Forman is currently a Principle Scientist within the Molecular Discovery Technologies Department of Bristol Myers Squibb. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in both Biology and Psychology at the University of Rochester and then joined the lab of Dr. Aldo Rossini at the University of Massachusetts Medical School for his PhD work investigating the effects of viral infection on stem cell transplantation tolerance. After completing his PhD, Daron joined the lab of John Iacomini at Harvard for his post-doctoral work examining the mechanisms by which T cells are rendered tolerant in mice reconstituted with retrovirally transduced bone marrow. Daron then left academics for a position at Tolerx to understand the mechanisms of action of humanized anti-CD3 and anti-GITR monoclonal antibodies, as well as work on identifying biomarkers for both programs. After 5 years, Daron joined BMS where for the last 9 years he has helped to setup an immunogenicity prediction core group responsible for utilizing in silico, in vitro and in vivo tools to help select drug candidates for further development.