Bianca Balbino
Senior Clinical Scientist argenx
As a scientist, I am a member of the pre-clinical project team where I work closely with scientists, research scientists, and external partners to discover, develop, and understand the mode of action of therapeutic antibodies. My role is to provide leadership in research, technology, and projects based on my knowledge, the scientific and patent literature.
Seminars
This workshop is a mechanism-focused deep dive into disease heterogeneity across MG, CIDP, MMN and GBS, bringing together drug developers to interrogate immunologic origins, autoantibody uncertainty and responder variability. By aligning biological nuance with development strategy, attendees will move beyond buzzwords around precision medicine and confront the mechanistic gaps that are currently limiting predictive biomarker validation and subtype stratification. Participants will leave with a clearer framework for integrating disease pathophysiology into patient selection, sequencing decisions and biomarker development, ultimately accelerating precision-driven clinical progress.
Key Questions to be Addressed:
- Dissecting how AChR-positive, MuSK-positive and seronegative MG differ mechanistically and determining how those differences should influence therapeutic positioningInterrogating the uncertain immunologic origins of CIDP and MMN to clarify where immunomodulatory approaches are biologically justified versus potentially misaligned
- Examining why heterogeneity is limiting predictive biomarker development and defining what evidence would be required to validate assays end-to-end for clinical use
- Debating how to biologically stratify patients before Phase III rather than retrospectively explaining nonresponse
- Exploring whether collaborative industry approaches are required to close development gaps in rare, heterogeneous populations
- Disease heterogeneity as the central challenge for biomarker development
- Interpreting biomarker signals in heterogeneous biology
- Using biomarkers to support disease understanding – exploratory biomarkers as learning tools
