This week CiMaas reached an agreement with several parties for a restart.

We are happy to announce that we are able to continue activities on our cell products. Further details will be communicated soon.

To our greatest regret CiMaas has filed for bankruptcy, which became effective Tuesday June 11, 2024. Although CiMaas has great assets in the field of NK cell immunotherapy for cancer using its proprietary feeder cell technology and expansion methodology, it was unable to raise enough financial resources to perform the required clinical studies. 

Under the agreement, CiMaas will provide CYTEA BIO with the GMP-grade K562-F012 feeder cells for the expansion of its umbilical cord blood-derived NK cells. Conversely, CYTEA BIO will supply CiMaas with Pin™ antibodies for the pre-arming of CiMaas NK cells to assess the benefit it brings and the opportunity to pursue a longer-term partnership.

The Committee for Advanced Therapies (CAT) from the European Medicine Agency (EMA) has classified the NK cell technology developed by CiMaas as somatic cell therapy medicinal product with the indication for acute myeloid leukaemia.

Recently 1085 companies were invited to submit a full proposal - based on a first screening - to apply for an EIC accelerator grant. Of them only 42 were granted (3,8%). A seal of excellence was given to 193 (17,8%), including CiMaas. CiMaas received another opportunity to defend its proposal for the EIC council in Mid June 2024.

Upon rigorous analysis, our research has demonstrated that this innovative feeder cell approach results in an enhanced proliferation rate for NK cells compared to the traditional method employing irradiated feeder cells. Remarkably, within a mere week, a 100-fold expansion rate is already achieved, with the potential for ongoing expansion. After 12 days we reach 19 billion cells in a 5L bioreactor.

Collaboration for the discovery and development of innovative cancer-specific CAR-NK products is underway, leveraging Combotope Therapeutics' proprietary Tumor Glycoform specific scFv discovery platform and CiMaas's Adoptive CAR-NK technology.

• CiMaas has the option to develop and commercialize up to three therapeutic candidates.
• Combotope Therapeutics will receive upfront payment, success fees, and royalties on sales.
• First candidate Mucin-1 tumor glycoform nominated.

CiMaas has filed a new patent application on a new method for the feeder cell preparation in support of its NK cell therapy program. Treatment with Natural Killer (NK) cells is the CiMaas strategy to potentially cure patients with cancer. CiMaas uses a feeder cell based NK cell expansion protocol to generate high NK cell numbers under GMP. 

CiMaas BV announces that it has created a GMP grade master cell bank of the F012 feeder cell line to support Natural Killer (NK) cell expansion isolated from peripheral blood cells. CiMaas had generated a feeder cell line containing two genes that induce NK cell proliferation and maturation resulting in NK cells with a memory phenotype and high killing capacity.

CiMaas’ leading product to fight cancer is Natural Killer (NK) cells. These cells kill tumor cells directly as has been observed in pre-clinical studies, as well as in clinical studies (patients with myeloid leukemia). To obtain a large number of these NK cells to treat patients, so-called feeder cells are needed to stimulate the proliferation and activation of NK cells.

By entering into a research collaboration with an option for an exclusive commercial  license for its antibody structures (specific directed against underglycosylated Mucin-1 and potentially other candidates) to CiMaas, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and CiMaas have strengthened their relation to fight cancer.

After several years of collaboration, Professor Dr Dean Lee has become a formal member of the scientific advisory board of CiMaas as of December 18, 2022.

CiMaas BV, a biotechnology company developing the next generation of immuno-oncology therapeutics based on its proprietary NK cell expansion platform, announced the date for a presentation of the company at the Biotech Showcase 2023, the investor conference as follows: Monday, January 09, 2023, at 3:00PM at the Hilton San Francisco - Union Square, 333 O'Farrell Street, Ballroom Level San Francisco, CA 94102, USA.

CiMaas successfully expands Natural Killer (NK) cells to clinically relevant numbers using a 2-week protocol. Starting from 200 ml peripheral blood, NK are expanded to numbers meeting the expected clinically required 10.E8 cells/kg, with multiple infusions. This makes the expansion method developed directly applicable for clinical application of the produced NK cells in anti-cancer therapies. 

As of March 1, 2022, CiMaas is a licensed manufacturer for cell-based products. The company received the manufacturing authorization from the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport – Farmatec/CIBG.

CiMaas, together with the Maastricht University Medical Center+ and the University Medical Center Utrecht have received a subsidy of € 1,48 million to further develop Natural Killer Cell therapy for breast cancer.

Cimaas has received an important stimulus from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) for the development of a therapeutic dendritic cell (DC) vaccine against lung cancer. It concerns a loan of € 2.4 million. 

As of October 1, 2020 esteemed tumor immunologist Prof Dr Jolanda de Vries becomes a member of the scientific advisory board.  Jolanda de Vries is head of the department of Tumor Immunology at Radboudumc, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Dutch website Oncologie.nu has interviewed CiMaas' Gerard Bos on the development of the dendritic cell vaccine for lung cancer.

While CiMaas is able to produce the required high numbers of natural killer (NK) cells intended to realise in the collaboration, we decided not to continue. Kiadis has refocused its clinical strategy to a concept of universal donors while CiMaas keeps working on the process of individual donors for each cancer patient where NK cells will be transfused in combination with a bone marrow transplantation.