Yea Jin Kaeser-Woo
Senior Director Eli Lilly & Co.
Seminars
Wednesday 3rd June 2026
Track A Chair
Thursday 4th June 2026
Panel Discussion: How Can We Treat Underlying TDP43 Pathology Outside of Clinical Presentation to Develop Effective Treatments in ALS, FTD & Beyond?
10:00 am
- What is the current understanding of TDP‑43 pathology across ALS, FTD, and related neurodegenerative diseases, and how does it inform therapeutic strategies?
- How can therapies be designed to target upstream TDP‑43 mislocalization, aggregation, or loss-of-function, independent of clinical symptom presentation?
- The role of biomarkers and imaging in detecting subclinical TDP‑43 pathology and enabling earlier intervention in patients
- Challenges and opportunities in translating preclinical findings into human studies, including target engagement, dosing strategies, and safety considerations
- Potential combinatorial approaches, such as pairing TDP‑43-targeted therapies with neuroprotective or gene-modulating modalities to enhance efficacy
Wednesday 3rd June 2026
Fireside Chat: How the Industry is Leveraging Spatial Omics for ALS Target Discovery & Biomarkers?
8:30 am
- How is spatial omics transforming our understanding of ALS pathology compared with traditional bulk tissue or single-cell approaches?
- Which emerging ALS targets or molecular pathways have been most compellingly revealed through spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, or multi-omic integration?
- How can spatial omics data be translated into actionable biomarkers for clinical trials, including patient stratification, early detection, or monitoring therapeutic response?
- What are the key technical, analytical, and interpretational challenges in applying spatial omics to human ALS tissue, and how are industry and academia addressing these?
- How do collaborative approaches between pharma, academic centers, and genome institutes accelerate the path from spatial omics discovery to drug development?
- Looking forward, what role will AI and machine learning play in extracting meaningful insights from complex spatial omics datasets in ALS?
