Webinar Description:

The biophysical properties of the binding between immune receptors and their antigen as defined by affinity, have been shown to be poor predictors of functional capacity of T cells. On the other hand, the overall binding strength (or avidity) between cells is a crucial parameter for developing new immune therapies. One of the main obstacles in this development is the lack of fast, specific and accurate technologies to assess their binding avidity. The z-Movi® is a novel and unique instrument for direct measurement of cell–cell binding avidity. This is accomplished by generating controlled acoustic forces in a microfluidic chip in which target cells are co-cultured with effector cells. As a result, effector cells are pulled up and released from the target cell monolayer once the acoustic force exerted on them exceeds their binding avidity to the target cell. With this webinar we will introduce the principle of the z-Movi and show that using this state-of-the-art technology, we demonstrate in a series of proof-of-concept experiments that binding avidity of NK cells, TCR transgenic T cells, CAR-T cells and T cells treated with bispecific antibodies to target cells strongly correlates with in vitro and in vivo functional capacity. In conclusion, the z-Movi is a benchtop cell avidity analyzer enabling direct and high throughput quantification of the binding avidity of hundreds individual cell-cell interactions simultaneously. The webinar will illustrate that binding avidity is a valuable new parameter to assess functionality of immune cells, proving the great potential of the z-Movi for improving the workflow of development of immune therapy against cancer.

Learning Objectives:

• the difference between avidity and affinity
• which tools can be used to select the best lead for the next phase of cellular therapy development
• why avidity matters in T cell cytotoxicity

Speakers:

Rogier Reijmers, PhD
Principal Scientist, Immuno Oncology Department
LUMICKS

Rogier Reijmers performed his PhD in the lab of Professor Steven Pals where he specialized in B cell development and malignancies. After acquiring his PhD, he continued his academic career in the lab of Dr. Tom Cupedo where he worked on lymph node function and how B cell follicles form. During this period he successfully obtained a highly prestigious VENI scholarship of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, which he used to further study lymph node function in the control of innate lymphoid cell and T cell function. He performed this work in the lab of Professor Reina Mebius. During this period he extended his knowledge on how the lymph node micorenvironment supports B cell malignancies, and was awarded a scholarship from Cancer Center Amsterdam. At the end of his Academic career, he switched places one more time, and started working with Dr. Mirjam Heemskerk, a leading experts in the identification, characterization and subsequent engineering of human T cell receptors. Dr. Reijmers was responsible for all the preclinical work using the identified TCRs. During his academic career, he published nearly 30 papers in many prestigious journals including Blood, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Nature Communications. Currently as an expert in Immunology and Hematology, Dr. Reijmers is the Principal Scientist at LUMICKS where he acts as advisor for product strategy and monitors the scientific integrity for immune oncology.

Cost: No Cost!