Nkarta

Nkarta, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company, which engages in the discovery, development, and commercialization of natural killer cell therapies for the treatment of cancer. The company is headquartered in South San Francisco, California and currently employs 105 full-time employees. The company went IPO on 2020-07-10. The firm is developing NKX019, a chimeric antigen receptor-natural killer (CAR NK) product candidate targeting the CD19 antigen for the treatment of patients with autoimmune diseases and NKX101, a CAR NK product candidate targeting cells that display NKG2D ligands. NKX019 is engineered with a humanized CD19-directed CAR for enhanced cell targeting and a proprietary, membrane-bound form of interleukin-15 (IL-15) for greater persistence and activity without exogenous cytokine support. CD19 is a biomarker for normal B cells as well as those implicated in autoimmune disease and B cell-derived malignancies. Its NKX019 autoimmune program is based on the potential to eliminate the pathologic B cells that produce autoantibodies.