JW Shinyak said Monday it has signed a collaborative research agreement with C&C Research Laboratories, a subsidiary of JW Pharmaceutical, to develop innovative anticancer cell therapies.

Under the agreement, JW Shinyak will develop a new CAR-NK cell therapy targeting solid tumors with C&C Research Lab, following the U.S. biotech company KURE AI Therapeutics.

Last December, JW Shinyak secured development rights, including sales royalties and technology fees to the CAR-NK cell therapy from its research arm JW CreaGene.

The project has been jointly researched with KURE AI, which has an AI-based R&D platform in the anticancer area since last year, to launch it to the global market in 2030.

JW Shinyak and C&C Research Lab will discover CAR-NK cell therapy candidates through joint research with KURE AI and establish their R&D platform for CAR-NK cell therapy based on gene manipulation technology.

Chimeric antigen receptor-natural killer therapies are anticancer drugs where NK cells, immune cells extracted from the blood of healthy people, are genetically engineered to bind to specific cancer cells and administered to patients.

The CAR-NK cell therapy developed by JW Shinyak through joint research can be mass-produced compared to CAR-T therapy, which requires only the patient's cells. It also has the advantage of reducing the risk associated with cytokine release syndrome (CRS), a possible side effect of CAR-T treatment.

The company expects it to show excellent efficacy in solid tumors resistant to immuno-oncology drugs.

"We have secured our pipeline to improve research efficiency on CAR-NK cell therapies and maximize future technology fee revenue," a JW Shinyak official said. "We will continue to strengthen cooperation with the group's core research institutes, C&C Research Laboratories, and KURE AI Therapeutics of the U.S. to develop next-generation immune cell therapies for precision cancer treatment."