Julia Gilden is a Senior Scientist and Group Leader at Promega Corporation, specialising in bioassay design for biologics drug development.
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Over the past 10 years, she has created reporter bioassays for immune checkpoint biologics, led the design of primary cell ADCC, TDCC, and ADCP assays using the HiBiT Target Cell Killing platform, and built applications tailored to cell therapy and ADC developers. Her current work centers on the Lumit™ XDC binding assay platform.
Julia received her PhD in Biomedical Sciences with a focus in immunology from the University of California, San Francisco, and completed postdoctoral training in cell biology and parasitology at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

T cell-based therapeutics, including bispecific T cell engagers and genetically engineered T cells, require robust functional assays throughout discovery, development, and manufacturing. This presentation showcases Promega’s integrated luminescent toolbox for characterizing T cell activation, target cell killing, and vector potency. We demonstrate applications spanning T cell engagers (measuring activation and target cell killing with reporter cells and primary CD8+ T cells), engineered T cell therapies (assessing CAR-mediated killing and lentiviral vector potency), and multiparameter cytokine profiling. These assays deliver precision, speed, and reproducibility in mixed-culture formats while requiring minimal sample handling, enabling streamlined decision-making from lead selection through clinical manufacturing.

Bethan is an Associate Director at Immunocore, where she leads the development and implementation of high-throughput assays to accelerate the discovery of next-generation T cell engagers.

With extensive expertise in laboratory automation and screening technologies, her background spans the design and execution of robust biochemical and cell-based assays to support diverse modalities, from peptide therapeutics to complex multispecific antibodies.

Prior to joining Immunocore, Bethan worked within the Biologics Engineering team at AstraZeneca and the high-throughput screening team at Crescendo Biologics. Throughout her career, she has focused on leveraging automated workflows and assay miniaturisation to streamline screening cascades and advance novel biologics through early discovery pipelines.

Roona is a Principal in Marks & Clerk’s London office. She is a European Patent Attorney and Chartered Patent Attorney (UK) with over 15 years’ experience advising clients across the life sciences sector, ranging from start-ups and SMEs to multinational organisations. She combines strong technical expertise with a commercially focused approach, helping clients secure, manage, and maximise the value of their intellectual property rights.
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Roona holds a first-class integrated Master's degree in Biochemistry and a doctorate in Immunology from the University of Oxford. Her strong academic background enables her to work at the forefront of complex scientific developments and translate scientific innovation into robust, commercially effective patent protection.
Her practice encompasses all aspects of patent work, including drafting and prosecuting patent applications, portfolio strategy and management, patent landscape analysis, and advising on infringement and validity matters. She represents clients before the UK Intellectual Property Office and the European Patent Office and has extensive experience in Examination and Opposition Oral Proceedings before the European Patent Office.

Roona's technical expertise spans a broad range of life sciences disciplines, with particular experience in immunotherapy, including antibody technologies, peptide vaccines, and other immune-based therapeutics, animal health, nutraceuticals, diagnostics, food science, and recombinant DNA technology. She has also advised clients in environmental and industrial technologies, including water treatment, reflecting the breadth of her practice.

Dr. John Bridgeman is a highly accomplished immunotherapy expert with a 20 year history converting scientific ideas into tangible therapies.
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With a PhD from the University of Manchester and further training at Cardiff University, John has a deep understanding of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) biology. Over his career, John established and led the R&D team, developing novel gene engineering strategies, managing IP portfolios, and driving projects from concept to clinical execution. He has made significant strides in advancing cell-based therapies, with a proven track record in patent filings, generating novel concepts, and progressing them through to phase 1 clinical trials.

Passionate about scientific discovery, John thrives on translating research into real-world therapeutic solutions. With a strong track record in securing funding, leading teams, and fostering collaborations, John is committed to advancing T-cell therapies and shaping the future of immuno-oncology.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has transformed the treatment of haematological malignancies, but its effectiveness in solid tumours remains limited. One major challenge is antigen heterogeneity, which can enable tumour escape, while expression of target antigens on healthy tissues may cause on-target, off-tumour toxicity. We developed CARKey™, a multi antigen-specific, logic-gated CAR T-cell platform designed to broaden tumour recognition while restricting full T-cell activation to defined antigen combinations.
CARKey™ separates T-cell activation across two complementary receptors. Key 1 recognises multiple tumour-associated antigens and delivers the primary activation signal, whereas Key 2 provides the additional signal required for a full T-cell activity. This two-key design is intended to maintain activity across heterogeneous tumour cell populations while reducing activation against healthy tissues that carry only part of the required antigen pattern.
CARKey™ also incorporates the Revi-T element, allowing Key 2 to be controlled through the addition of a checkpoint blockade antibody. This can bypass the requirement for the Key 2 antigen target and enhance CARKey™ T-cell proliferation and cytokine secretion whilst synergising with standard checkpoint blockade activity to overcome tumour microenvironment suppression.
Candidate antigen combinations and CARKey™ designs were evaluated in ovarian cancer models and compared with conventional single-target CARs. The lead candidate retained the intended two-key mechanism, with its strongest proliferation and anti-tumour activity observed when both Key 1 and Key 2 were engaged. CARKey™ also showed improved logic-gated activity and stronger functional responses across tumour cell lines and patient-derived ovarian ascites samples.
These findings support CARKey™ as a versatile and controllable platform with the potential to address antigen heterogeneity in solid tumours while reducing toxicity risk. Further in vivo evaluation and preclinical development are under way to advance CARKey™ towards clinical assessment in ovarian cancer.

Dr Mark Bushell, Director of Technology at Maxion Therapeutics, and his team are developing the next generation of Maxion’s proprietary KnotBody platform to unlock the potential of these novel biologics to target ion channels and other integral membrane proteins. 

Mark has over 15 years’ experience in biologics drug discovery, with a particular focus on platform and process improvement. His work has included developing rapid, high-throughput methods that allows antibody generation and screening in days rather than weeks. In recent roles at Antiverse and Agenus he has used these tools to explore the interface between computational design and high throughput screening to accelerate the discovery and development of novel biologics.

Charlotte Hornby is a QC Scientist with over 8 years experience in Bioassay GMP sample analysis, qualification and validation studies to support client programs.

Recently, Charlotte completed a MSc in Biopharmaceutical Development in partnership with Labcorp and the University of Leeds where the final project focused on optimizing Promega's Ramos HiBiT TCK assay for measuring potency of a BiTE which is the subject of her presentation. 

Bispecific T-cell engagers (BiTEs) are a subclass of bispecific antibodies which simultaneously bind patients’ T-cells and cancer cells, bringing them physically closer together allowing T-cells to ultimately kill patients’ cancer cells. Blincyto is a BiTE used in the treatment of CD19+ leukemias where it binds to CD19 on cancer cells and CD3 on T-cells. Promega’s Ramos (HiBiT) TCK Bioassay kits utilize this mechanism to measure target cell killing. Promega’s technical manual was further optimized by Labcorp by changing assay conditions to produce an assay for measuring the potency of samples. To develop the method, factors including BiTE concentration, cell thawing/seeding, incubation periods and maximum target-cell kill controls were investigated. Conditions which generated the highest replicate precision and target-cell killing were included in the optimized method. The optimized method was used to measure the cytotoxicity of a research grade Anti-CD3-Anti-CD19 molecule and genuine Blincyto molecule. The preliminary data highlighted the sensitivity of the assay to molecules of differing purity, indicating the assays suitability for future characterization studies. Using the optimized method, the potency of an Anti-CD3-Anti-CD19 sample was further investigated using target potencies of 66% and 150% of reference standard which provided initial data on the assay range highlighting the potential for future validation of the method to measure the potency of molecules. Finally, the data generated was compared to in-house LDH-endpoint assay data to determine the advantages of each assay system. 

Her research pioneers understanding of how cells recognise, process and respond to complex nanoscale structures. Combining molecular and cell biology with nanotechnology, advanced imaging and proteomics, her group investigates nanoscale biological identity, intracellular trafficking and fate.
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Recent work has focused on corona-condensate nanoparticle complexes and on developing molecular tools to follow endosomal escape, intracellular distribution and the local molecular environments encountered by delivered biomolecules. Her recent publications include work in Nature Materials, Nano Letters, PNAS Nexus and ACS Nano.

Yan received her PhD from Peking University and established her independent research programme at the University of Melbourne through an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship. She subsequently moved to University College Dublin where her research has been supported by Research Ireland and Science Foundation Ireland. She has received several prestigious awards, including First Prize in the 2017 Interstellar Initiative organised by the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research in 2013.

Dr. Camilla Ascanelli is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Cambridge.

Building on her PhD in live-cell imaging assay development for protein stability, her postdoctoral work in the Wilson lab moved into mRNA therapeutics. By merging these two domains, she helped develop a HiBiT-based live translation assay, which the lab uses to optimise modRNA treatments for cardiac regeneration. Her research also encompasses bioPROTAC degrader platforms targeting c-Myc. 

Optimising messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics requires fine-tuning structural elements, such as 5′ caps, UTRs, codon usage, nucleotide modifications, and poly(A) tails, to maximise translational efficiency. Traditional assays relying on heavily engineered reporter proteins fail to reflect the translation dynamics of specific therapeutic proteins of interest (POIs). To overcome this, we developed a flexible, high-throughput split-luminescence complementation platform using the minimal 11-amino-acid HiBiT tag to monitor live mRNA translation dynamics in live cells and cell-free systems in real time. Using this system, we demonstrated that structural optimisations exert sequence- and POI-dependent effects on translation, underscoring the necessity of evaluating designs directly on target sequences. The assay can also be used to streamline in vitro transcription conditions, and we have shown that a fourfold reduction in cap concentration maintains equivalent translational output. Overall, this split-luminescent HiBiT assay provides a scalable, versatile framework for tracking live translation, significantly accelerating both sequence optimisation and cost-effective manufacturing of mRNA therapeutics.