Nkarta, Inc. announced a poster presentation at the 2023 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition featuring follow-up data from its Phase 1 clinical trial that evaluates NKX101 in patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (r/r AML). NKX101 is an allogeneic, off-the-shelf NK cell therapy candidate derived from healthy donors and engineered to target NKG2D ligands. As reported in June 2023, of those patients who received NKX101 after a disease-specific lymphodepletion (LD) regimen comprising fludarabine and cytarabine (Flu/Ara-C), four of six achieved CR/CRi.

In the follow up presented, three of those four patients remained in CR/CRi at 4 months from treatment with NKX101. No cases of cytokine release syndrome (CRS), immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome (ICANS), or graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) of any grade were observed in these patients. By combining its cell expansion and cryopreservation platform with proprietary cell engineering technologies and CRISPR-based genome engineering capabilities, Nkarta is building a pipeline of future cell therapies engineered for deep therapeutic activity and intended for broad access in the outpatient treatment setting.