The discovery and challenges of antibodies targeting GPCRs

Xavier Leroy, Chief Technology Officer, Domain Therapeutics

Xavier Leroy, PhD, is Chief Technology Officer at Domain Therapeutics. Xavier started his biotech/pharma career at Novartis, then moved to Axovan and later spent more than thirteen years at Actelion Pharmaceuticals Ltd (Switzerland). As Associate Director he developed multiple GPCR-targeting programmes in the field of neuroscience, inflammation and immuno-oncology; several of his programmes moved to clinical trials. 

Most recently he was Head of Drug Discovery at Belgium-based iTeos Therapeutics, overseeing the development of the company’s immuno-oncology portfolio, as A2AR and TIGIT programmes. Xavier is a member of the management committee of European Co-operation in Science and Technology (COST) where he actively participates in the European Research Network on Signal Transduction. At Domain Therapeutics, Xavier is leading the biology, pharmacology and immunology departments and is expanding the company portfolio with the discovery and development of therapeutic mAbs targeting GPCRs.

Martine Smit, Professor of Target and Systems Biochemistry, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Martine Smit, PhD, is professor of Target and Systems Biochemistry at the Faculty of Science of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Professor Smit focuses on important concepts of GPCRs (eg, constitutive activity, ligand-biased signalling, allosterism, dimerisation), which are important for understanding and targeting of (oncogenic) signalling networks activated by human and viral chemokine receptors. In the last decade, Professor Smit has identified several nanobodies, single domain antibody fragments, effectively targeting and modulating GPCR function. She was project co-ordinator of Horizon2020 ITN project ONCORNET (Oncogenic GPCR Network of Excellence and Training) (2015-2019) and is currently co-ordinating ONCORNET2.0 (2020-2024).