ONK Therapeutics and NAYA Biosciences enter research partnership

Ireland and USA-based natural killer (NK) cell therapy biotech ONK Therapeutics and US firm NAYA Biosciences have entered into a research partnership to evaluate combination therapy consisting of ONK’s optimally-engineered natural killer (NK) cell therapies and NAYA’s FLEX-NK bispecific antibodies.

Specifically, the partnership will explore the combination of ONK’s ONKT105, CISH 0+ TGFβR2 double knock-out (KO), sIL-15 knock-in (KI) allogeneic NK cell therapy with NAYA’s GPC3-targeted NY-303 FLEX-NK bispecific antibody. No financial terms of the collaboration have been disclosed, other than that both companies will share the costs of manufacturing and preclinical assessments.

“We are impressed with the data ONK has generated using its differentiated editing of NK cells, which may further enhance the efficacy of our FLEX-NK bispecific antibodies,” commented NAYA’s chief executive Dr Daniel Teper. “The future development of this combination therapy alongside our monotherapy clinical trials will help expand patient options and narrow the gap towards improving the long-term survival of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma,” he explained.