S. Korea's GI Cell, Japanese partner to study cell therapy for blood cancer

South Korea's GI Cell, the cell therapy affiliate of GI Innovation, on Tuesday said it signed an agreement with Optieum Biotechnologies of Japan on joint research in blood cancer.

Optieum is developing a platform to find a single-chain fragment variable (ScFv) structure that boosts the effects of treatment of targeted diseases.

Under the agreement, GI Cell will perform a feasibility study on development of new treatments by applying Optieum's antibody targeting blood cancer to the next-generation anti-cancer treatment CAR-NK cell therapy.

Such therapy combines a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that specifically reacts to cancer and natural killer (NK) cells.

If GI Cell pursues the commercial application of the developed treatment, it will pay the technical royalty or milestone and other payments to Optieum for each stage of development and commercialization.

GI Cell CEO Hong Chun-pyo said, "We expect that this antibody has the potential to accelerate the development of our new CAR-NK medication."

Write to Ji-Hyun Lee at bluesky@hankyung.com