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Aneesh Karatt-Vellatt, PhD is Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder at Maxion Therapeutics, a biotech company from Cambridge, UK focused on developing antibody treatments for diseases driven by ion channels and GPCRs. Dr Karatt Vellatt was also co-founder of IONTaS and holds a doctorate in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge.

Ion channels are an important target class implicated in several untreated or poorly treated diseases. Despite the potential of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) in this area, no ion channel-targeting mAbs have achieved clinical approval or are currently in active clinical development. Maxion has successfully generated ion channel-modulating antibodies by inserting small, cysteine-rich miniproteins (knottins) into antibody CDR loops. The resulting KnotBody molecules retain the potent ion channel activity of knottins while benefiting from the favourable drug-like properties of antibodies. This presentation will illustrate the discovery and optimisation of KnotBody inhibitors against therapeutically relevant ion channel targets.