NK cell therapy company NK:IO raises seed money

London-based UK New Cancer Therapeutics award winner (£1.6m)  NK:IO Ltd has raised £1.2M bringing total equity financing to £3.2m. This, together a previous Innovate UK Accelerator grant of £300,000  will bring the seed financing to a total of £5.1m. The round was led by Cancer Research Horizons. Imperial College Enterprise Fund, Start Codon, UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund and Meltwind acted as co-investors

NK:IO Ltd, spun out from the labs of immunologist Hugh Brady and chemist Matt Fuchter at Imperial College London in 2020, will use the proceeds to progress the preclinical development and a GMP-compliant expansion of its Umbilicord stem cell-derived NK cell therapy candidates. The £3.2M equity funding is in addition to £1.9M grants awarded comprising the recent Innovate UK New Cancer Therapeutics award of £1.6M and a previous Innovate UK Accelerator grant of £300,000.

The company’s platform solves certain problems in NK cell expansion and potentcy. By deleting inhibitory receptors, it allows effective expansion of blood stem cell progenitors to yield NK cell tumour-killing potency and very high yield cell production, which the company  believes will be transformative in cancer cell therapy. The platform enables efficient engineering of progenitor cells.