Manel Merabet
Chief Development Officer SKYMAB Biotherapeutics
Dr. Manel Kraiem Merabet serves as Chief Development Officer, bringing over nine years of translational and clinical research expertise from cancer centers and biotech. Previously, she spent six years as a Senior Project Manager at Innate Pharma, leading ADC projects from optimization to IND. Recognized as an ADC expert, she has been a panelist at the World ADC Congress. She holds a PharmD, a PhD in Oncology and Immunology, a European Radiopharmacy degree, and a Master’s in Organic Chemistry, driving innovative therapeutic development with deep scientific and strategic acumen.
Seminars
As linker innovation rapidly evolves from incremental chemistry optimization to multifunctional control over stability, selectivity, and biodistribution, the field faces a defining challenge: how do we systematically reduce systemic toxicity while preserving potency in increasingly complex tumor environments?
Join leading experts as they exolore how to harmonize conjugation precision, linker stability, and tumor-selective release mechanisms into integrated design frameworks by:
- Reconciling stability with selective activation, examining how charge-shielding, hydrophobicity-masking, and hydrophilic click chemistries can be strategically combined with orthogonal linker architectures to prevent premature systemic cleavage while preserving efficient tumor-site payload release
- Redefining conjugation precision as a determinant of safety, debating the extent to which homogeneous, site-specific enzymatic attachment and controlled DAR distribution can improve pharmacokinetics, reduce off-target toxicity, and enhance the predictability of biomarker-driven efficacy
- Designing linkers to modulate biomarker dependence and bystander effects, evaluating whether next-generation architectures should enforce strict antigen-density reliance or enable controlled payload diffusion to address tumor heterogeneity while maintaining an optimized therapeutic window
- Evaluating orthogonal versus linear linker architectures to demonstrate superior in vivo efficacy and therapeutic index enabled by controlled, multi-stage drug release at the tumor site
- Comparing traditional PEGylated linkers with novel Polysarcosine (PSAR)-based shielding technologies to optimize the hydrophilicity-masking balance, minimizing offtarget interactions while maintaining favorable pharmacokinetics
- Presenting proof-of-concept data for a tumor-selective linker design, where enzymatic cleavage within the microenvironment precisely exposes the cytotoxic payload, enhancing therapeutic specificity and safety
