NKCL Bio Group, exclusive license and its contents

NKCL Bio Group has secured an exclusive license by signing a contract for a patent-exclusive license. Exclusive license refers to the right of the patentee, etc. to exclusively use the patented invention as a business within the scope of a contract with a third party by specifying the content, area, and period. The exclusive license secured by NKCL Bio Group is an immune cell therapy technology through allogeneic-immune cell culture, which expands the business area in addition to the original technology owned by NKCL Bio Group.

Functional limitations of autologous NK cell culture

The existing NK cell therapy of NKCL Bio Group has been developed and produced based on autologous NK cells. Autologous NK cells use the own immune cells of each subject to resolve immune rejection and have rare case of side effects. The safety of autologous NK cell therapy has been verified widely, but there are some limitations in terms of efficacy and universality.

What will change with the exclusive license?

According to the renowned journal 'Frontiers in Immunology', Immune therapy using allogeneic NK cell is much more cost-effective and productive than that of using autologous NK cells. Since immune cells from healthy donors always maintain a constant quality, culture and treatment methods are standardized to ensure uniform quality of treatment.

In addition, it reduces the cost and increase the accessibility to the public, in the sense that it can be administered to an individual patient or multiple patients as well with a single culture, and the storage of cultured allogeneic NK cells is effortless.

This means that it is possible to use and culture allogeneic immune cells from healthy donors to treat severe, terminal cancer patients in a state that autologous cell culture is almost impossible due to a low activity level of cells and its small number. It implies the achievability of effective treatment opportunities even for patients with severe terminal cancer, where cell culture of its own subject is not possible. For cancer patients who have limited time and opportunities, allogeneic immune cells will provide more time and opportunities.

In addition to allogeneic immune cell therapy, there are advantages in that the active ingredients of the culture medium obtained during the culture process can be used as raw materials for cosmetics or pharmaceuticals. It can be used as an active ingredient in cosmetic and pharmaceutical compositions by securing a large amount of a culture medium from which immune cells have been removed, that is, a culture composition containing active ingredients such as cytokines.

Expected expertise in the bio industry and expandability to other fields

By securing an exclusive license, NKCL Bio Group has the right to develop pharmaceuticals and consumer goods (based products) for allogeneic-immune cell therapy, able to expand and enhance its expertise in the bio area. This means penetrating into another market in the bio industry.

An official from NKCL Bio Group said, “NKCL Bio Group has secured technology for autologous- immune cell therapy as well as allogeneic-immune cell therapy, thereby stepping into unlimited marketability and expendability. Ahead of the completion of the GMP automatic culture system facility and the NK Immune Center, which are currently in progress, the exclusive license will give the synergy effect grafting them in multiple areas.”