Watch presentations from this virtual workshop featuring leading scientists in the field of immuno-oncology (IO) discussing the best practices of applying humanized immune system (HIS) mice for IO therapies.

There are three distinct sessions which cover topics that focus on the use of HIS mice in evaluating efficacy of a wide-range of IO therapeutic modes. We highlight those models most appropriate for studies involving particular human immune cell types, and review best practices for the use of humanized mouse models in preclinical IO drug discovery research.  

Presentations

Session 1: Introduction of HIS Mouse Models for Preclinical IO Research

Session 2: Utility of Humanized Immune System Mice for the Investigation of T and Myeloid Immune Cell Populations and Immunotherapies

Session 3: Current and Evolving Approaches to Preclinical IO Models 

About the Speakers

Ivan Gladwyn-Ng (B.Sc.(Med.), PhD, is a Field Application Scientist at Taconic Biosciences who has utilized rodent models within many diverse fields of preclinical research for more than a decade. He is passionate about accelerating advancements in human health by improving the care and application of in vivo animal models in the drug discovery process. He is particularly interested in the studies of infectious, oncological, metabolic, and neurological diseases. 

Michael Oropallo is a Principal Scientist within the Investigative Toxicology department at Merck. In this capacity, Mike develops translational in vivo and in vitro Immunotoxicity assays to advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying drug induced adverse events and ultimately de-risk compounds to prevent these adverse events from developing in the clinical setting. He has led efforts to characterize humanized immune system mice and to incorporate these models into efficacy and safety studies for a diverse array of therapeutic areas. Mike also serves as an immunology subject matter expert and as a safety lead for compounds in early and late-stage development.

Christine Sedlik, PhD, is an immunologist working at the INSERM U932 Translational Immunotherapy Team, at the Center for Cancer Immunotherapy of the Institut Curie, in Paris. Her topics of research are dedicated to the better understanding of interactions between immune and tumors cells, and the development of immunotherapies against cancers, as monotherapy or in combination with other approaches. The team is working using in vitro mouse and human experimental models and using in vivo pre-clinical mouse tumor models to evaluate therapies both in mouse syngenic conditions and in humanized mice. She has been working on the optimization of the use of PBMC-Hu mice engrafted with human tumors for IO, including cytokine-transgenic NOG mice.  

Eleonora Leucci obtained her PhD in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Siena (Italy) in 2007. She then moved to BRIC, University of Copenhagen (Denmark) where she worked on small and long non-coding RNAs in the lab of Anders Lund as a postdoctoral fellow. Since 2012, she works in Belgium, where she was first a Marie Curie/VIB postdoctoral fellow in Chris Marine’s lab and then as FNRS research associate at ULB, studying the role of lncRNAs in skin cancers.

Since 2017 Eleonora Leucci leads the laboratory for RNA cancer biology and heads the PDX platform TRACE at KU Leuven. Her lab studies RNA metabolism in cancer with particular focus on the characterization of long non-coding RNAs important for therapy resistance.

Dr. Hoffmann holds a Diploma in Pharmacy and Experimental Pharmacology and Toxicology and obtained his PhD degree from the Humboldt University Berlin. As postdoc he worked at Schering AG on tumor angiogenesis and at the University of Pittsburgh on “Redox regulation and cell death”. In 1997 he joined Schering AG/Bayer AG as group leader in Oncology Research and since 2009 he is the managing director of EPO. Dr. Hoffmann has special expertise for drug development, oncolytical viruses, biomarker research, tumor immunology and tumor models (PDX).