Pioneering Project supports NK Cell Therapy Potential

Imperial spin-out NK:IO, a leader in Natural Killer (NK) cell biology, has announced a collaborative project with the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult for the advancement of potent cell therapies targeting solid tumours. The company has been awarded funding of £1.6M from Innovate UK’s New Cancer Therapeutics program for both preclinical and manufacturing development that will bring forward tumour killing therapeutic solutions.

NK:IO is based on pioneering discoveries in NK cell biology from Hugh J M Brady, Professor of Immunology, and Matt Fuchter, Professor of Chemistry, at Imperial College. It is exploiting these discoveries in a platform which activates blood stem cell progenitors to yield cell tumour-killing potency combined with very high cell production, which it believes will be transformative in cancer cell therapy. In addition, this platform enables efficient engineering of progenitor cells to produce next-generation NK cells for further increases in potency or tumour targeting, which are being progressed for certain hard to treat tumour subtypes.

The company was founded in December 2020 by Hugh J M Brady, Matt Fuchter, and Mike Romanos, an experienced industry executive and entrepreneur, with the Board chaired by Keith Thompson CBE, former CEO of the UK’s Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult. Its first indication targeted will be ovarian cancer, in collaboration with Prof. Iain McNeish, Professor of Oncology at Imperial College, Director of the Ovarian Cancer Action Research Centre and a leading expert in the field.

Mike Romanos, Co-Founder and Interim CEO, said: “We are very excited by the potential of NK:IO’s platform to address unmet needs in cancer therapy and delighted to receive grant funding from this highly competitive new Innovate UK program. The funding will directly support our collaboration with the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult in a program of development work to scale our products and make them clinic-ready for our first clinical application in ovarian cancer.”

More information online