30th July, 2020 - LUMICKS has entered into a collaboration with Glycostem Therapeutics, the Netherlands, to improve immunotherapeutic drug development. By quantifying binding strength between immune and cancer cells using the unique z-Movi^® Cell Avidity Analyzer, Glycostem exploits the predictiveness of avidity in finding the best NK-cell population for cellular therapy.

Glycostem is a leading NK-cell manufacturer that has developed stem cell-derived therapeutic strategies, such as oNKord^® and CAR-NK cells. In this collaboration, Glycostem will assess their NK cells using LUMICKS’ z-Movi to gain new insights into the cell avidity and functional properties of their cells. Avidity is a new parameter that is crucial to understand immune cells better and choose the most potent ones for immunotherapy.

“Adding the z-Movi to our repertoire will improve the development of our NK cell-based therapy platforms using oNKord^® and genetically modified NK cells,” said Jan Spanholtz, CSO at Glycostem, “We are thrilled to implement single-cell avidity analyses to our workflow as it is an invaluable and efficient predictor of our product’s immune-cell functionality and mechanism of action.”

LUMICKS is looking forward to this collaboration as future findings at Glycostem will validate the workflow of the z-Movi, the only available cell avidity analyzer. The partnership enables LUMICKS to expand on the implementation of the z-Movi to new immunotherapeutic settings, confirming its great value to different fields.

“We are excited to work together with Glycostem and show the value of avidity analyses as a critical parameter to evaluate the potential of clinical leads for immuno-oncology therapy.” said Olivier Heyning, CEO at LUMICKS, “The collaboration will validate the use of the z-Movi for studying NK cells, a promising off-the-shelf alternative to autologous CAR T-cell therapy.”

With their quick cell-killing properties, NK cells have become a go-to approach in immuno-oncology. Genetically engineered CAR-NK cells are highly attractive candidates for immunotherapies as they show improved tumor targeting and reduced side effects compared with commonly used CAR T-cell therapies.