CHA Biotech to co-develop NK cell therapy with CanCure
CHA Biotech has entered into a collaboration with U.S. immunotherapy biotech company CanCure to develop a natural killer (NK) cell therapy, the company said Monday.
CHA Biotech said it has signed a material transfer agreement for an anti-MIC antibody treatment with the U.S. company.
The anti-MIC antibody targets the MIC (MHC class I polypeptide-related sequence) antigen expressed by cancer cells. MIC refers to a protein that plays an important role in regulating and controlling NK cell killing of cancer cells.
When NK cells recognize MICA or MICB coming from cancer cells, the ability to kill cancer cells weakens.
“CanCure’s anti-MIC antibody can reverse the immune suppression of tumor-shed MIC and enhance the tumor-killing ability of NK cells, allowing NK cells more powerful control of cancer cells,” CHA Biotech said.
CHA Biotech plans to evaluate the therapeutic effectiveness of the combination of MIC-targeted antibodies and allogeneic NK cells, which are captured from healthy individuals, in various cancer models.
“In order to expand and strengthen CHA Biotech’s NK cell therapy pipelines, we are pursuing multiple combination strategies with immune checkpoint inhibitors and antibodies,” said Lee Hyun-jung, CEO of CHA Biotech. “We plan on increasing the speed and success rate of clinical trials for our NK cell therapy through an open innovation approach with novel biopharmaceuticals and technologies.”
CHA Biotech has been strengthening its NK cell therapy pipeline, signing a material transfer agreement recently with Centenaire Biosciences for a combination therapy of NK cell therapy.
In addition to antibody combination therapy, the company is also developing CAR-NK cell therapy by applying chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) to enhance the therapeutic effect of NK cells, and establishing superior embryonic stem cell lines (ESC) to develop ES-CAR-NK cell therapy.