Kiadis and CiMaas, Dutch developers and producers of cell therapy for cancer, have now signed an agreement to co-develop a fast and efficient production process to generate high numbers of Natural Killer Cells with strong capacity to kill tumor cells.
CiMaas also has a focus on the development of cell therapy against cancer. Its’ lead product – a cell vaccine against several types of cancer – will go into clinical phase studies in 2020.
Before the acquisition of Cytosen by Kiadis, CiMaas – in close collaboration with the University of Maastricht – had a long-standing collaboration with Cytosen on the development of NK cells.
Wilfred Germeraad – CSO of CiMaas: CiMaas and Cytosen, recently acquired by Kiadis Pharma, have co-developed an efficient methodology for culturing and expanding NK cells over the last years, to large numbers required for treating cancer patients. CiMaas and Kiadis will now collaborate to develop an even more efficient methodology for culturing large numbers of NK cells from blood. Kiadis’ knowledge of process technology and scale up aims to decrease the time and cost needed for these therapies.
Mathieu Streefland – Director Process Development at Kiadis: the CiMaas team has extensive knowledge on NK cell culture and functional testing. Together with our expertise on process development of cell therapies, we hope that our collaboration with CiMaas will enhance our capabilities for a fast, reliable and cost-effective NK cell expansion process.