CHA Biotech, a Kosdaq-listed cell therapy company, said Monday that it has signed an agreement with Cancure, a U.S. immunotherapy developer, for a joint development of natural killer (NK) cell treatment to increase the anti-cancer effect of NK cell therapeutics.

Under the agreement, CHA Biotech will receive a material transfer of antibodies targeting MHC class I polypeptide-related sequence (MIC) antigens expressed by cancer cells from Cancure.

MIC is a protein that plays an important role in the process of NK cells killing cancer cells, and when MIC-targeted antibodies block MICA or MICB, NK cells attack cancer more powerfully, CHA Biotech said.

CHA Biotech plans to evaluate the therapeutic effect of combining MIC-targeted antibodies and NK cells in various cancer models as soon as the clinical plan is finalized.

“To expand and strengthen our 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 NK cell therapy through an open innovation approach with our novel biopharmaceutical technologies.”

In addition to antibody combination therapy, CHA Biotech is also developing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-NK cell therapy and ES-CAR-NK cell therapy using embryonic stem cell (ESC) to enhance the therapeutic effect of NK cells.