Marc Sze
Principal Scientist Merck & Co
Seminars
Wednesday 2nd December 2026
Panel Discussion: Defining Cross-Indication Expansion Strategies to Maximize the Clinical & Commercial Potential of Antifibrotic Therapies
2:30 pm
- Determining when preclinical evidence is sufficiently robust to justify expanding an antifibrotic program into additional fibrotic indications rather than remaining disease-specific
- Identifying the biological, translational, regulatory, and commercial factors that should guide indication prioritization, including shared mechanisms, biomarker availability, clinical endpoints, and unmet need
- Exploring whether future antifibrotic programs should be intentionally designed as multi-indication assets from discovery or whether expansion should remain a staged, indication-by-indication strategy
Thursday 3rd December 2026
Roundtable Discussion: Co-Developing Therapeutics, Biomarkers & Clinical Endpoints to Enable Earlier Proof of Disease Modification
11:30 am
Practical and highly interactive breakout roundtables where attendees can crowd
source solutions and share opinions around pre-assigned topic areas.
- Integrating multi-omics, spatial biology, and digital pathology to identify predictive biomarkers, pathogenic fibroblast subpopulations and novel therapeutic targets
- Aligning therapeutic mechanism, patient selection strategy and biomarker development from early discovery through clinical translation
- Determining how biomarkers can support target identification, responder stratification, treatment monitoring and endpoint development across the antifibrotic pipeline
- Discussing how early integration of translational biomarkers can reduce clinical uncertainty, accelerate proof-of-concept and improve confidence in disease-modifying potential
Moderator Feedback & Audience Debate
Moderators will be assigned to each roundtable to facilitate discussion and collate
the findings. Following the roundtable discussions, they will present back to the entire
delegation and open wider audience debate
