AFMD - Affimed Presents Preclinical Data Showing that Addition of an Innate Cell Engager to NK and CAR-NK Cells Improves Tumor Cytotoxicity of Both Cell Types at the 38th Annual Meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer | Benzinga
- Addition of Affimed's innate cell engager (ICE®) improves cytotoxicity of natural killer (NK) cells and CAR-NK cells
- NK cells with ICE® show at least comparable anti-tumor cell efficacy to CAR-NK cells with ICE®
- ICE® combined with NK cells obviate the need for complex and costly manufacturing compared to CAR-NK cells
- ICE® offer flexibility to be used with NK cells from different sources
MANNHEIM, Germany, Nov. 03, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Affimed N.V. (NASDAQ:AFMD) ("Affimed", or the "Company"), a clinical-stage immuno-oncology company committed to giving patients back their innate ability to fight cancer, today presented a poster at the annual meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), indicating the Company's ICE® improves cytotoxicity of NK and CAR-NK cells and that NK cells redirected by ICE® exhibit at least the same efficacy against tumor cells as CAR-NK cells alone or redirected by the ICE®. The results emerged from a collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology (IZI) in Leipzig, Germany.
"This is the first direct comparison of NK cells redirected by Affimed's ICE® with CAR-NK cells," said Dr. Arndt Schottelius, Chief Scientific Officer at Affimed. "It is exciting to see that the combination of NK cells with ICE® exhibits an anti-tumoral efficacy which is at least comparable to that of CAR-NK cells. The combination of allogeneic NK cells with ICE® molecules represents the most straightforward way to generate potent and targeted NK cells. This suggests high flexibility and cost-effective manufacturing as there is no additional engineering of NK cells required."
To compare approaches, the preclinical efficacy of NK cells combined with a tetravalent bispecific CD16A/CD19-targeting ICE® against CD19-positive tumor cells was compared to the efficacy of anti-CD19 CAR-NK cells alone or in combination with the ICE®. Cytotoxic activation was assessed by calcein-release assays, ...