Licensing

In addition to its promising therapeutic capabilities, Conkwest’s Natural Killer (NK) cell line is a versatile product with broad non-therapeutic applications.

Enhanced versions of the parent NK-92 cell line provide a valuable platform for testing antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) responses in vitro.

Role of NK Cells in ADCC

Antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) is one of the most potent molecular mechanisms used by the immune system to eliminate tumor cells.

Several prominent therapeutic anti-tumor antibodies, such as Rituxan® and Herceptin®, promote ADCC to induce tumor cell death. NK cells are the key immune cells that promote the ADCC response.

ADCC Assays Challenges

Numerous pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are developing and testing therapeutic anti-tumor antibodies to treat cancer. A reproducible and low-cost ADCC assay to measure the potency of these antibody drug products is greatly needed.

Currently, the available in vitro ADCC assay involves acquiring and culturing primary NK cells derived from volunteer human donors, a process that can be costly and inconsistent.

NK-92 in ADCC Assays

Conkwest’s proprietary NK-92 cell line has been transduced to express the two major variants of the CD16 receptor.

Two versions of the NK-92.CD16 cell line have been established: one expresses the high affinity receptor and the other expresses the low affinity receptor.

The NK-92 Advantage

The NK-92 cell line has significant advantages over other available NK-like cells for use in functional assays. The major advantage is NK-92’s high cytolytic responsiveness toward a wide variety of tumor target cells.

Assay Applications

NK-92.CD16 cells provide a platform for testing ADCC responses in-vitro and offer potential applications including:

Discovery research
High-throughput screening
Characterization
Batch or quality control release testing of clinical product
Stability testing
In-vitro detection of neutralizing antibodies

Obtaining NK-92 Cell Lines

NK-92 and NK-92-CD16 cell lines are presently available on a limited basis for commercial and academic assay development.

For further information or to inquire about licensing NK-92 cell lines, please use the Contact Us page.