Can we freeze them? Yes we can, says Nkarta

Paul Hastings, chief executive of Nkarta, is not shy about his company’s achievement. “We have mastered cryopreservation,” he tells Evaluate Vantage.

And with that the company might have solved the biggest problem to have held back development of NK cell therapeutics: normally the cells cannot be frozen without risking changing their phenotype. Nkarta also reckons to have cracked another problem, transfecting NK cells with a retrovirus, and its optimism matches the market mood of resurgent enthusiasm for these therapies.