Last month, Antibody Solutions made its annual pilgrimage to the world-renowned Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics (AET) conference in San Diego. Attendance at AET is a time-honored tradition at Antibody Solutions (we’ve been going for nearly twenty years) and, as always, we enjoyed it a lot. While the overall vibe this year was a bit more sober and cautious than usual, the conference still offered all the same traditional opportunities to connect with our clients and colleagues; when an event attracts more than 900 attendees on an average year, you’re sure to run into at least a few people you know.
We always like to present something new at AET, and this year it was all about B-cells. We made our parallel use of activated B-cells, plasma B-cells, and memory B-cells the focus of our AET outreach this year due to the key roles they play in CellestiveTM, our platform of discovery services. We presented the poster Multiple B-Cell Pathways to Antibody Discovery by Cellestive, which takes the reader through the process of interrogating activated, memory, and plasma B-cells in the pursuit of therapeutic antibodies. The poster illustrates the many benefits of using each B-cell pathway while showing how all three are integrated into Cellestive. Because each pathway offers different benefits – higher diversity, unique germlines, and unique CDRs – Cellestive’s B-cell stage offers a holistic approach to antibody discovery. We were excited to share our data at AET, and, if you missed it there, you can grab our poster through this link.
Each year, AET hosts many excellent presentations, and choosing which to attend always reminds you of how spoiled you are for choice. There were around 130 of them this time, and the ‘quality’ of the content matched up well with sheer ‘quantity’. One talk that stuck with me was How Multispecific Biologics are Transforming Pharmacotherapy, given by Raymond Dashaies, PhD, of Amgen. In his presentation, Dr. Dashaies detailed the ways in which multispecific formats enhance efficacy, selectivity, and safety, along with expanding the types of targets and pharmacological properties of antibody-based therapeutics. Advancements in the engineering of antibodies was another popular topic this year, with innovations in Fc engineering, antibody-drug conjugates, and bispecifics all highlighted. Novel bispecifics that were discussed, both in talks and on the exhibition floor, included proteolysis-targeting chimeras (Protacs), glycan-targeting chimeras (AbLecs), and low-density lipoprotein receptor-targeting chimeras (LipTacs). All really exciting stuff!
AET isn’t all business. Santa's Sweethearts make a surprise musical appearance on day two of the conference with their
Andrews Sisters-inspired take on “Last Christmas.”
Many attendees were feeling cautiously optimistic about the year ahead, especially when it comes to what the innovations described at the conference will bring to the antibody therapeutics field. For our part, we’re starting to see sharp increases in interest around discovery projects seeking to employ bispecific, multispecific, or ADC formats, and we're already deploying technologies to enable discovery and evaluation of these new modalities.
Our team at Antibody Solutions always welcomes opportunities to merge good science with collegiality, so we were privileged to spend AET 2025 connecting with our cherished colleagues and meeting new friends. We’re also grateful to our friends at OmniAb for sponsoring the very fun off-site event at Moonshine Flats, a country western bar in San Diego’s beautiful Gaslamp District.
Michael Trang, John Kenney, and Joshua Lowitz outside Moonshine Flats, the site of OmniAb’s annual off-site event at AET.
If you weren’t able to make it to AET this year, it’s not too late to chat with us about the value that B-cell pathways can bring to your therapeutic antibody discovery endeavors. Contact us today to learn how the many facets of the Cellestive platform can illuminate a richer, more robust path to your therapeutic candidate.