From 19th-22nd February I was fortunate enough to participate in the joint Keystone Symposium on Next-Generation Antibody Therapeutics and Multispecific Immune Cell Engagers, held in Banff, Canada. Now in their 51st year, the Keystone Symposia are a comprehensive programme of scientific conferences spanning the full range of topics relating to human health, from studies on fundamental bodily processes through to drug discovery.
There were several things that distinguished this conference from others I’ve attended. For one, it seems that all Keystone Symposia are held in remarkable venues, with a clear bias towards mountainous locations (Keystone itself, their ‘home base’, is deep in the Colorado Rockies) and fancy accommodation! This conference was no exception, taking place in a luxury hotel styled after a castle, with phenomenal views down the Bow River.
Conventionally, conferences involve densely packed daytime schedules with back-to-back talks and poster sessions. Instead, the Keystone Symposia are similar to the Gordon Research Conferences insofar as the early afternoon is entirely set aside for networking/recreation/exploring the stunning local scenery. For many attending the conference in Banff, this meant an afternoon skiing the slopes/snowshoeing before returning back around 5pm for an evening session of talks and a late-evening poster session from 7pm-10pm. This is a refreshing difference and addressed a common frustration of mine when traveling for conferences: traveling to a new country/city but only seeing the inside of a hotel and never really experiencing the place you went to.
Another, less publicised, feature of the Keystone Symposia is that they encourage presenters to share preliminary, unpublished research, with the understanding that attendees will not take photos/videos of the posters/presentations or share details of the research outside of the conference. This means that attendance of a Keystone Symposium offers personal insight into what sorts of science might be published by the community in the next 6-12 months. It also encouraged an open/collaborative spirit amongst participants. For example, it is the first conference I’ve attended in which an industry presentation covered problems they were experiencing with a clinical stage medicine. The wave of questions after the talk highlighted that several other companies had run into similar issues, but until this point they had not been openly discussed.
Finally, all talks given at the conference are also expected to be presented as a poster. This is a great idea, as it means there is a designated session after the talks where attendees know they will have ample chance to ask follow-up questions from the oral presentations. Frequently at conferences, oral presenters are not expected to bring posters, meaning you have to get your question in immediately after the talk, or battle the crowd of people that inevitably swarm the presenter at the start of the next break!
I took two pieces of OPIG research to the conference, our published work on T-cell receptor mimetic antibodies (10mins talk + poster) and recent advancements to our Therapeutic Antibody Profiler (poster), which we intend to preprint shortly. We received valuable feedback from many researchers (both academic and industrial) on both projects, and it was very helpful to understand how our computational work currently fits into the reality of experimental drug discovery. In general, I find speaking to researchers outside of our bubble incredibly valuable, particularly to help keep my focus on developing tools that address genuine challenges experienced by antibody engineers.
The ability to meet more people face-to-face was probably my primary benefit from this conference; after years of virtual conferences throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a real pleasure to finally put faces to names and feel the thrill of scientific discussions where knowledge is exchanged and new collaborations are forged. The entire structure of this conference, from the round tables at breakfast/dinner to the open afternoon agenda, is geared towards facilitating these sorts of conversations.
As you might guess from the locations/venues, Keystone Symposia are not cheap conferences to attend. Registration alone is over $1000, which, coupled with long-haul flights and accommodation costs, would eat a large chunk out of even the most generous PhD/PostDoc travel budgets. This likely limited both the number of attendees (around 400 across the joint meetings), and inevitably skewed the career level of the conference attendees towards research team leaders/academic principal investigators. The organisers of the Symposia seem to recognise this, and offer the chance to apply for scholarships to defray around $1200 of travel expenses to encourage a broader diversity of attendees; I was a grateful recipient of this award, and it hugely helped to bring the expenses more in line with other long-haul international conference trips.
Overall, costs aside, I found the Keystone Symposium a great experience, and totally different to the much larger conferences that I’ve attended up until this point (such as ISMB and PEGS). It is particularly valuable for earlier stage researchers eager to engage with the community, both due to its manageable number of attendees and relatively low-intensity schedule. Just be sure to take some thermals with you…
