NorthX Biologics and Mendus are expanding their cell therapy manufacturing collaboration to establish production of donor-derived memory natural killer (NK) cells using Mendus’ proprietary DCOne technology.

The initiative is supported by a SEK 977,300 grant (approximately $100,000) from Vinnova, Sweden’s government innovation agency, and builds on the companies’ existing large-scale manufacturing collaboration for Mendus’ lead product candidate, vididencel.

The project will focus on producing memory NK cells from healthy donors for potential use in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) following stem cell transplantation. Natural killer cells are part of the innate immune system and help identify and eliminate cancer cells.

Memory, or adaptive, NK cells have demonstrated enhanced and sustained antitumor activity. Their presence following allogeneic stem cell transplantation has also been associated with lower relapse rates, providing a rationale for investigating them as a post-transplant treatment approach.

Mendus’ DCOne technology uses a proprietary leukemia-derived cell line to produce mature dendritic cells that serve as feeder cells in the expansion of NK cells outside the body. These dendritic cells express co-stimulatory molecules and other activating signals that stimulate NK cell proliferation.

In research presented by Mendus, co-culturing NK cells from cytomegalovirus-positive donors with DCOne-derived dendritic cells selectively expanded memory NK cells. The approach is intended to generate therapeutic quantities of these cells without genetic engineering.

The new project is separate from vididencel, which Mendus is developing as an immunotherapy for myeloid blood cancers. The companies established their large-scale manufacturing alliance for vididencel in 2023 and will now extend their work to the memory NK cell program.

Vinnova awarded the grant through its competitive Life Science Infrastructure program, following evaluation by an independent panel of external experts. The agency cited the project’s potential to strengthen Sweden’s cell therapy manufacturing capacity and establish infrastructure of strategic importance for future commercialization.

“Establishing manufacturing of donor-derived memory NK cells may create future opportunities to address unmet needs in AML, particularly in the post-transplant setting where we have not positioned vididencel,” Erik Manting, CEO of Mendus, said in a statement.