December 24, 2014
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
San Diego, Calif.-based Conkwest, Inc., announced today that well-known biotech billionaire and NantWorks founder Patrick Soon-Shiong has inked an agreement to buy about $48 million of the company’s Class A Common Stock.
As part of the deal Soon-Shiong will be named Co-Chairmen of the company’s board of directors. Conkwest also announced that Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc. would buy $2 million of the company’s stock.
Conkwest, which dubs itself the “Natural Killer Cell Company of the West,” focuses on immuno-oncology, developing and commercializing therapeutics that recognize, bind and directly kill cells that express specific cancer-related molecules. Its platform is Neukoplast, or NK-92, which attacks cells that express stress ligands such as LFA-3, Heparin Sulfate, ICAM-1 and other proteins associated with cancer and virally infected cells.
“Immunotherapy is one of the most powerful next-generation platforms added to our war against cancer,” said Soon-Shiong in a statement. “Integration of Nantomics’ advanced proteomics platform with the power of Sorrento’s fully human antibody libraries and Conkwest’s natural killer cell-lines is expected to enable an approach to attack tumors and their micro-metastases in a manner never before addressed. NantWorks ‘GMP in a Box’ cell production methods, together with the company’s proprietary means of gene transfer without the need of lentivirus insertion is expected to enable the next generation of NK based immunotherapy to emerge.”
On Dec. 19, NantWorks announced it was spending $20 million to develop Sorrento’s PD-1, PD-L1 and CTLA-4 antibodies. Sorrento’s Cynviloq has moved into a pivotal Phase III trial using the 505(B)(2) pathway. It is also studying resiniferatoxin (RTX) for the treatment of cancer-associated pain. It is also looking at M-MAB therapeutic antibodies such as PD-1, PD-L1 and others for cancer treatment.
Sorrento and Conkwest will work to develop a combination of their two products, Sorrento’s G-MAB antibodies, and Conkwest’s Neukoplast cell line. The platform will be called CAR-TNK (pronounced “Car-Tank”), and will be developed for treatment of hematological and solid tumors. Conkwest’s NK therapy is currently in Phase 1 trials.
“Dr. Soon-Shiong’s investment in Conkwest strengthens Sorrento’s existing partnership with NantWorks and Conkwest,” said Henry Ji, president and chief executive of Sorrento in a statement. “We believe the combination of NantWorks’ knowledge in genomic and molecular profiling of cancer patients with Sorrento’s antibody technology expertise and Conkwest’s proprietary Neukoplast cell-lines will accelerate and streamline the development efforts of our next generation stable CAR-TNK cell-lines.”
