Paul Sauter
Senior Director Chemistry and Bioconjugation VERAXA Biotech GmbH
Dr. Paul Sauter is the Senior Director of Chemistry & Bioconjugation at VERAXA Biotech GmbH in Heidelberg, Germany. Since joining the company in 2020, he has steadily advanced from Head of Chemistry to his current senior leadership role, driving innovation in bioconjugation. He previously served as a Postdoctoral Scientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. Dr. Sauter earned his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. With deep expertise spanning organic synthesis and chemical biology, he now leads the development of cutting-edge bioconjugates to advance the next generation of precision biologics.
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
- Understanding the advantages of the Veraxa hydrophilic click chemistry technology for enhancing ADC stability and pharmacokinetics while minimizing non-specific tissue uptake
- Showcasing reduction of off-target toxicity via charged payloads and tumor selective linkers to improve the therapeutic index and broaden the safety window for nextgeneration ADC therapies
- Increasing ADC selectivity by dual targeting bispecific ADCs via an End-Gate Approach to overcome tumor heterogeneity and mitigate on-target off-tumor toxicity for more precise cancer cell killing
