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About The Speaker

Marc Robillard

Co-founder and CEO of Tagworks

Marc Robillard

Marc is co-founder and CEO of Tagworks, a pioneer of in vivo click chemistry, and the inventor of the now widely used Click-to-Release approach for improved systemic therapies. He spun the technology out of Philips and then drove its development into a broadly applicable platform technology for systemic therapies, while building a broad IP estate, productive partnerships, and a strong investor base. Before spinning out, Marc worked at Philips Healthcare on molecular imaging and drug delivery programs, eventually focusing on in vivo click chemistry applications in these domains. Prior to Philips, he worked at Kreatech Diagnostics on the development of probes for drug targeting and microarray-based detection of DNA, RNA and proteins. In addition, he was a visiting scientist at the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Marc obtained his MSc and PhD in bio(in)organic chemistry at, respectively, the University of Groningen and the Leiden Institute of Chemistry, The Netherlands. He has published 39 peer-reviewed papers and is a co-inventor on 21 patents.

Click-to-Release: on-target activation and off-target deactivation of antibody-based therapies

Many targeted cancer therapies are hampered by a limited therapeutic window. To address this, we have developed a technology known as Click-to-Release, a chemical cleavage reaction that is selective and fast enough for clinical use in vivo, allowing control over drug activity at the desired location and/or time. Click-to-Release can capture the full potential of potent systemic therapies in multiple ways. It enables delivery to the tumor microenvironment and controlled on-target cleavage and activation of ADCs through a click reaction with a trigger molecule, which is administered in a second step. This allows expanding the ADC target scope to non-internalizing receptors and potentially increases efficacy through maximizing the bystander effect. And the Click-to-Release approach enables off-target deactivation of radioimmunotherapy, by selective cleavage and renal clearance of the radiolabel from freely circulating radioimmunotherapeutics, decreasing dose-limiting toxicity in the bone marrow. This contribution will cover examples from both ends of the therapeutic window.

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