Nkarta

Nkarta, based in South San Francisco and listed as NKTX, is a CAR-NK company that shelved its oncology programmes after response rates fell and pivoted to autoimmune disease. Its NKX101 candidate in acute myeloid leukaemia saw its response rate fall from 67 percent to 25 percent and was deprioritised, and the CD19 CAR-NK NKX019 was withdrawn from lymphoma development and is now in phase 1 for lupus nephritis and other autoimmune conditions. OnCo links it to acute myeloid leukaemia and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, to CAR-NK and CAR-macrophage technology, to CD19 as a target, and to the idea of off-the-shelf natural killer cells to sweep up residual disease. The record is a data point on the limits of unmodified CAR-NK persistence. Whether engineered NK cells can be made to persist long enough to treat cancer is the question its retreat leaves open.