Sarat Chandarlapaty is a Physician-Scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York where he holds the Naddisy Foundation Endowed Chair in Breast Cancer Research. Sarat completed a PhD in Biochemistry from UNC and his MD from Wake Forest University. He went on to residency and fellowship in Oncology at MSK, performing postdoctoral studies in the lab of Neal Rosen.

Sarat has focused his independent research career on understanding the basis for resistance to targeted therapies in cancer. His laboratory discovered and helped characterize mutation in ESR1 as the dominant, acquired mechanism of clinical resistance to aromatase inhibitors and developed oral ER antagonists as modality to overcome resistance. His group has gone on to characterize major forms of resistance to targeted therapies including CDK4/6, PI3K/AKT, and HER2 inhibitors. In recent years his group has investigated mechanisms of resistance to Antibody Drug Conjugates and new strategies to optimize their use.

Hongyun Zhao, PhD, is a oncologist and Professor at Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, where she serves as Chief Physician, PhD supervisor, Director of the Phase I Unit, and Deputy Director of the Department of Clinical Trial Center. With training in oncology at Sun Yat-sen University and visiting scholarship at MD Anderson Cancer Center, she has become a leading figure in precision therapy and innovative drug development for lung cancer. Zhao has spearheaded first-in-human trials of groundbreaking agents such as EGFR/HER3 bispecific ADC, B7-H3 ADC, and ROS1 TKI, many of which progressed to Phase III studies and reshaped global treatment guidelines. Her work has led to landmark publications in Nature Medicine, Lancet Oncology, and Cancer Cell. As principal investigator of major national grants, she has advanced translational strategies to overcome drug resistance. With over 80 SCI papers and multiple national awards, Zhao has established China’s most influential Phase I oncology ward.

Ira Mellman (FAACR, FAIO) is President of Research at the Parker Institute of Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) and CSO of Medici Therapeutics, both in San Francisco, California.  An expert in cancer vaccines, Ira is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and former VP of Cancer Immunology at Genentech, Sterling Professor of Cell Biology & Immunobiology at Yale Medical School, and a postdoctoral fellow with Ralph Steinman at The Rockefeller University.  Ira is best known for fundamental advances in cell biology and immunology (particularly the discovery of endosomes) and for applying these insights to elucidate the mechanisms of antigen processing by dendritic cells and the basis of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibition; Ira was also responsible for devising the Cancer Immunity Cycle framework.  At Genentech, his group discovered or developed four FDA-approved cancer agents, including the anti-PD-L1 antibody atezolizumab (Tecentriq®); he is also credited with initiating the first personalized mRNA cancer vaccine in collaboration with BioNTech and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  Ira is the recipient of the 2025 Richard Smalley award of the Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer and the Lloyd J. Old Award for Cancer Immunotherapy from the American Association for Cancer Research.

- Co-founder, Chief Scientific Advisor and Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of Cullinan Therapeutics

- Honorary Professor of Immunology at the Institute for Immunology, Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU), Munich

- As former Executive Partner of venture capital firm MPM BioImpact became the co-founder of eight biotech companies in the US and Europe: Harpoon, Maverick, Werewolf, TCR2, Aktis, Crossbow, iOmx and Cullinan

- Leadership roles in new drug discovery at Tularik, Micromet, Amgen, Harpoon, Maverick, Crossbow and Cullinan

- Pioneering work on T cell-engaging antibodies leading to Blincyto as the first FDA-approved, bispecific, T cell-engaging and CD19-targeting antibody

- Seminal research on transcription factor NF-kappaB

- Formerly Professor and Chairman of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Freiburg, School of Medicine, Germany

- Formerly Group Leader at the Gene Center, Martinsried, Germany

- Post Doctorate at the Whitehead Institute/MIT, Cambridge, with David Baltimore

- Study of biochemistry at the Universities of Konstanz and Munich

- Hirsch Index of 146

Ignacio Melero, MD, PhD, is Professor of Immunology at the University of Navarra, Senior Group Leader at Cima Universidad de Navarra, Co-Director of the Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy, and Kidani Chair of Oncology at the University of Oxford. Over the past three decades, he has established an internationally recognised translational research programme dedicated to understanding how antitumour immunity can be therapeutically generated, amplified, sustained and restored.

Professor Melero is internationally recognised for pioneering the therapeutic development of CD137 (4-1BB) costimulation, from the original proof-of-concept demonstrating tumour rejection with agonistic antibodies to the mechanistic foundations of current tumour-targeted and bispecific CD137 immunotherapies. His research has also defined key mechanisms governing dendritic cell–T-cell interactions, immune resistance to checkpoint blockade, and the clinical translation of immunotherapy for hepatocellular carcinoma. His work continues to shape the development of next-generation antibody-based cancer immunotherapies by integrating fundamental immunology with clinical translation.

Dr. Feng Shao is an investigator and deputy director at National Institute of Biological Sciences (NIBS), Beijing. He was a chemistry undergraduate of Peking University and obtained his PhD from University of Michigan. Before returning to China in 2005 to assume an assistant investigator at NIBS, he was a Damon Runyon Postdoc Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Shao has been appointed as an Endowed Chair Professor of Tsinghua University since 2020 and currently also serves as the Associate Director of Changping National Laboratory and the President of Chinese Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Dr. Shao’s research lies at the interface between bacterial pathogen and host immunity. He identified most of the known cytosolic receptors for bacteria, including caspase-11/4/5 for LPS and ALPK1 for ADP-heptose in LPS biosynthesis. He identified gasdermin-D whose cleavage by caspase-1/4/5/11 determines pyroptosis, critical for sepsis and other inflammatory diseases. His work establishes the gasdermin family of pore-forming proteins, re-defining pyroptosis as gasdermin-mediated programmed necrosis.

Dr. Shao has published >100 peer-reviewed articles with the total citation of > 70,000 and an H index of 82. His work has been recognized by numerous awards including the Future Science Prize, William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic and Tumor Immunology, HHMI International Early Career Award and the Protein Society Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award. He is an elected member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, an associate member of EMBO, and a fellow of American Academy of Microbiology and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.