In This Section

Program

Please note that this meeting will take place as an in-person event in Toronto and will not live-stream content for virtual participation. The meeting content will be recorded and made available as an on-demand program after the conference. Please see the registration page for details.

All presentations are scheduled to be live, in-person presentations at the date and time specified below unless noted otherwise. Program in progress.

*-Short talk from proffered abstract

MONDAY, DECEMBER 9 

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11

Monday, December 9

Registration

2:30-7 p.m. | Convention Level Foyer

WELCOME AND OPENING Keynote

5:15-6 p.m. | Toronto II + III

  • Welcome from cochairs 
  • Introduction of keynote speaker 
    Chudi O. Ndubaku, Paraza Pharma, Montreal, QC, Canada
  • Redefining cancer treatment with tumor targeted modalities: Achievements, opportunities and challenges 
    Puja Sapra, AstraZeneca, Gaithersburg, Maryland

Plenary Session 1: Innovations opening up the potential for safer therapeutic agents

6-8 p.m. | Toronto II + III

Session Chair: Philip Jones, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  • Leveraging synthetic lethality for the development of novel cancer therapies
    Kimberly J. Briggs, Tango Therapeutics, Boston, Massachusetts
  • Synthetic lethality: Pathways to therapeutic discovery 
    Daniel J. Durocher, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Toronto, Canada 
  • Structure-guided design and optimization of small molecule CD73 inhibitors with excellent drug-like properties: discovery of quemliclustat*
    Jenna Jeffrey, Arcus Biosciences Inc. Hayward, California
  • Overcoming traditional design limitations with AI-based discovery
    David Hallett, Recursion, Oxford, United Kingdom 

Opening Reception  

8-9:30 p.m. | Toronto I

Tuesday, December 10

Breakfast

7-8 a.m. | Convention Level Foyer

Plenary Session 2: Developing efficacious drugs with better combinability 

8-9:45 a.m. | Toronto II + III

Session Chair: Chudi O. Ndubaku, Paraza Pharma, Montreal, QC, Canada 

  • Optimizing drug properties during lead optimization, and laboratory studies to support development of drugs for potential clinical combination
    Paul Workman, Centre for Cancer Drug Discovery, The Institute of Cancer Research, London, United Kingdom
  • Helping academic investigators develop small molecules for the clinic: The NCI developmental therapeutics program and stepping-stones*
    Sharad Verma, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland
  • Progress, pitfalls and promise: the journey to effective and well tolerated DNA damage response inhibitor combinations in the clinic
    Timothy A. Yap, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas
  • Preclinical Approaches to Discovery and Development of Novel Combination Therapies
    Jerome Mettetal, AstraZeneca, Waltham, Massachusetts

Keynote 2

9:45-10:30 a.m. | Toronto II + III

Session Chair: Chudi O. Ndubaku, Paraza Pharma, Montreal, QC, Canada 

  • Leveraging conformational dynamics for improved selectivity
    James Watters, Relay Therapeutics, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Break

10:30-11 a.m. | Convention Level Foyer

Plenary Session 3: Engineered Nanoscale Drug Delivery Systems / Modern Formulation-Driven Approaches  

11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | Toronto II + III

Session Chair: Philip Jones, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  • An integrative approach to nanomedicine: leveraging new tools to advance drug delivery
    Natalie Boehnke, University of Minneapolis, Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • Bioengineering cell-based therapeutics
    Omid Veiseh, Rice University, Houston, Texas
  • Strategies to close the translational gap for nanoscale drug delivery systems
    Joelle Straehla, Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington

Lunch on own

12:30-2 p.m.

Plenary Session 4:  Drug Design and Optimization – New and emerging targets 

2-4 p.m. | Toronto II + III

Session Chair: Philip Jones, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  • New targets for treatment of lung cancers
    Matthew L. Meyerson, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts
  • EP300 loss of function is a pan-cancer sensitizer to BET inhibition*
    Tomas Babak, Leapfrog Bio, San Mateo, California
  • Discovery of the dual A2A/A2B receptor antagonist MK-1088 for the treatment of solid tumors
    Duane DeMong, Merck and Co., Boston, Massachusetts
  • Mechanistic insights for the advancement of PPARG inverse agonists in muscle invasive urothelial cancer
    Jacob I. Stuckey, Flare Therapeutics, Atlanta, Georgia
  • Discovery of etrumadenant, a first-in-class dual A2a and A2b adenosine receptor antagonist for cancer immunotherapy*
    Ehesan Sharif, Arcus Biosciences Inc. Hayward, California

Break

4-4:30 p.m. | Convention Level Foyer

Plenary Session 5: Emerging frontiers in bivalent degraders: from screening to data-driven insights

Session organized by the AACR Cancer in Chemistry Research (CICR) Working Group 

4:30-6 p.m. | Toronto II + III

Session Chair: Katherine Donovan, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

  • Title to be announced
    Mikko Taipale, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
  • New chemistries to target transcription
    Michael A. Erb, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California
  • Transferrin receptor targeting chimeras (TransTACs) for targeted degradation of membrane and extracellular proteins in cancer
    Xin Zhou, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School, Boston Massachusetts

Poster Session /Reception  

6-7:30 p.m. | Toronto I

Wednesday, December 11

Breakfast

7-8 a.m. | Convention Level Foyer

Plenary Session 6:  Drug Design and Optimization #2 – Brain penetration  

8-10 a.m. | Toronto II + III

Session Chair: Chudi O. Ndubaku, Paraza Pharma, Montreal, QC, Canada 

  • Pan-RAF-MEK molecular glue NST-628 is a potent and brain-penetrant inhibitor of the RAS-MAPK pathway
    Klaus Peter Hoeflich, Nested Therapeutics, Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • Optimization and development of brain penetrant PI3K inhibitors for the treatment of glioblastoma
    Laurent Salphati, Genentech, San Francisco, California
  • Brain penetrant allosteric EGFR inhibitors for NSCLC*
    David Scott, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts
  • Discovery of brain-penetrant inhibitors for the treatment of BRAF mutant tumors
    Dean Kahn, Ambrosia BioSciences, Boulder, Colorado

Break

10-10:20 a.m. | Convention Level Foyer

Keynote 3

10:20-11 a.m. | Toronto II + III

Session Chair: Philip Jones, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  • Introduction of keynote speaker 
    Philip Jones, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  • Bridging the “valley of death” with modern clinical drug development
    Patricia M. LoRusso, Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, Connecticut

Plenary Session 7:  Selective Targeting – Gross Tissue-Restricting and Local (Non-Systemic) Administration (small molecule)

11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. | Toronto II + III

Session Chair: Philip Jones, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  • Discovery of DYP688, a first-in-class clinical-stage PMEL17-targeted antibody drug conjugate for the treatment of GNAQ/11-mutant uveal melanoma 
    Joe Wzorek, Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • Dual-drug ADC platform for effective and safe cancer treatment
    Kyoji Tsuchikama, The University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, Texas

Closing Remarks and Departure

12 p.m.  | Toronto II + III

  • Chudi O. Ndubaku, Paraza Pharma, Montreal, QC, Canada