Daewoong Pharmaceutical said it signed an agreement with UCI Therapeutics, a CAR-NK cell treatment developer, to conduct joint research on immune cell therapy on Tuesday.

Under the agreement, the two companies will cooperate in developing immune cell therapy based on their cell therapy development and production technologies.

Daewoong will expand GMP manufacturing facilities to produce UCI Therapeutics’ investigative CAR-NK immune cell therapy samples for non-clinical and clinical trials. The collaboration will be valid for five years from the agreement signing date.

UCI Therapeutics was founded in 2020 as a biotech venture firm. Through gene transduction, the company develops CAR-NK immune cell therapy based on NK cell engineering technology. CAR-NK is a next-generation immune cell anticancer therapy that combines CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) and NK (national killer) cells that specifically respond to cancer cells.

The company said that UCI Therapeutics’ key technology, “CellTaCT,” is a cell-based fusion therapy development platform to overcome the limitations of the existing combination therapy mixing cell therapy and anticancer drugs.

“We are excited to work with UCI Therapeutics, developing a CAR-NK immune cell therapy based on NK cell engineering technology,” said Jeon Seng-ho, CEO of Daewoong Pharmaceutical. “With this agreement, Daewoong will jointly develop immune cell therapy with UCI Therapeutics and do our best to satisfy the unmet needs for intractable diseases.”

UCI Therapeutics CEO Jeong Soo-young said, through cooperation between Daewoong, with rich experience in new drug development, and UCI Therapeutics with the technology to develop gene transduced cell therapy, UCI Therapeutics will focus the two companies’ capabilities to speed up the commercialization of CAR-NK immune cell therapy.