Here, you can get an overview of the already confirmed speakers for the 2026 conference. More information will be added gradually.
Keynote Speakers
Stephane Bancel
Cambridge, USA
Talk title:
mRNA 2.0: The Race to Learn Faster
Content of the talk
How AI and China will reshape the next decade of medicines. mRNA 1.0 proved that we could move rapidly from sequence to product. mRNA 2.0 will be won by the fastest trusted learning system. AI will transform what we design; China will reset how quickly and economically we test it; delivery, human biology and regulatory credibility will remain the constraints.
Feng Zhang
Cambridge, USA
Brian Brown
New York City, USA
Talk title:
Investigating the role of muscle, liver, and DCs in mRNA vaccine immunogenicity
Content of the talk
mRNA vaccines can be expressed by a diversity of transfected cell types but how cell-type-specific expression influences immunity is poorly understood. Using synthetic microRNA target sites (miRT) to control mRNA vaccine expression, we are answering this question, and learning that mRNA vaccine immunogenicity is influenced by its expression patter.
Ke Cheng
New York, USA
Talk title:
RNA therapy for heart repair
Content of the talk
Taking a bioengineering approach, this lecture will introduce the uses of drug delivery and biomaterials strategies to generate potent exosome-based and RNA-based therapies for heart and lung diseases. In addition, a pharmacoengineering approach is taken to refine cell therapies by developing acelluar therapeutics such as stem cell-derived exosomes in the setting of heart and lung repair.
Wayne Doyle
San Diego, USA
Talk title:
Lab-in-the-Loop: Closing the Design-Build-Test Gap in mRNA Development
Content of the talk
How a lab-in-the-loop platform accelerates mRNA therapeutic development by closing the gap between computational design and wet-lab validation.
Patrick Engström
San Diego, USA
Talk title:
Choosing the Right Enzyme for RNA Manufacturing and Therapeutics
Content of the talk
Purpose-built RNA polymerases influence IVT yield, capping efficiency, and dsRNA levels to match different RNA workflows.
Ben Kleinstiver
Boston, USA
Talk title:
From bespoke to more universal genome editing treatments
Content of the talk
There has been exciting recent progress with genome editing technologies benefitting patients in the clinic. To further enable the application of these transformative technologies, we are taking simultaneous protein and nucleic acid engineering approaches to develop tools that can generate diverse edits from small (nucleotide) to large (kilobase-scale) sequence changes, which together will enable the development of new genomic medicines.
Bowen Li
Toronto, Canada
Tyson Lobb
St. Louis, USA
Talk title:
Unraveling the Role of Type I Interferon Signaling During mRNA Vaccination
Content of the talk
Type I interferon signaling is a key regulator of immune responses to mRNA vaccination, yet its precise role remains unclear. Our work is focused to understand how interferon signaling influences vaccine-induced immunity to improve mRNA-LNP efficacy.
Michael Mitchell
Pennsylvania, USA
Anna Marie Pyle
Connecticut, USA
Shu-Bing Qian
Ithaca, USA
Talk title:
Programmable mRNA translation initiation by trans-RNA
Content of the talk
We design capped antisense RNA oligos to guide ribosomes to specific start codons on target mRNA, thereby modulating translation initiation efficiency.
Gaurav Sahay
Oregon, USA
Naoki Yamada
Cambridge, USA
Ed Yaworski
Basel, Switzerland
Talk title:
Innovative biodegradable lipids enable potent and safe delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics
Content of the talk
Hepatic and Extrahepatic Nucleic Acid Delivery via LNP.