Vaxcellbio Publishes Study on NK Cell Expansion Technology in International Journal ‘Cancers’

Hwasun, Korea — Vaxcellbio (CEO Je-Jung Lee, MD, PhD), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing cancer immunotherapies, announced on Thursday that its collaborative research with the University of Ottawa has been published in the international peer-reviewed journal Cancers.

The study demonstrates the potential of a novel cell-culture platform utilizing Vaxcellbio’s proprietary third-generation NK cell expansion technology to generate large numbers of natural killer (NK) cells from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) obtained from healthy donors. The findings provide an important manufacturing framework for next-generation NK cell therapies and CAR(Chimeric Antigen Receptor)-NK cell therapies.

NK cells are innate immune cells capable of recognizing and destroying cancer cells without prior sensitization and are increasingly recognized as a promising platform for next-generation cancer immunotherapies. Their ability to be sourced from healthy donors also makes them attractive for the development of allogeneic, off-the-shelf cell therapies. However, achieving clinically meaningful cell numbers while maintaining functionality has remained a major challenge in the field.

In this study, researchers evaluated ARH-77, a plasma cell leukemia-derived cell line, as a feeder cell platform for ex vivo NK cell expansion. Compared with the widely used K562 feeder cells, unmodified ARH-77 cells demonstrated superior performance, achieving approximately 681-fold NK cell expansion after four weeks of culture, compared with approximately 155-fold expansion achieved with K562 cells.

The research team further engineered ARH-77 cells by introducing B7-H6, CD137L (4-1BBL), IL-15, and IL-15Rα genes to enhance NK cell activation and proliferation. Under optimized culture conditions, the platform achieved more than 100,000-fold NK cell expansion, representing a breakthrough level of expansion that significantly outperformed existing NK cell expansion technologies.

Importantly, the expanded NK cells maintained high purity and potent cytotoxic activity against cancer cells, demonstrating that large-scale expansion did not compromise therapeutic functionality. While the degree of expansion varied among individual donors, the superior performance of the ARH-77 platform remained consistent throughout the study.

The publication highlights Vaxcellbio’s expertise not only in NK cell-based therapeutics but also in advanced cell manufacturing technologies. The company believes this platform may serve as a key enabling technology for the commercialization of off-the-shelf NK cell therapies and CAR-NK products by supporting scalable and cost-effective manufacturing.

“This study validates the advantages of Vaxcellbio’s third-generation NK cell expansion platform through publication in a respected international scientific journal,” said Dr. Je-Jung Lee, Chief Executive Officer of Vaxcellbio. “By demonstrating the ability to generate large quantities of functional NK cells, we have strengthened the manufacturing foundation for next-generation immune cell therapies, including off-the-shelf NK cell therapies and CAR-NK products.”

He added, “Vaxcellbio will continue advancing both therapeutic development and cell manufacturing technologies to enhance its global competitiveness and accelerate the development of innovative cancer immunotherapies.

Vaxcellbio is developing a diversified pipeline of immune cell therapies, including NK cell therapies, CAR-NK, CAR-T, and CAR-MIL(Marrow Infiltrating Lymphocytes) programs. The company continues to advance its NK cell platform technologies while expanding research and clinical development efforts targeting advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, extensive-stage small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and other difficult-to-treat malignancies.