NKMax's US subsidiary listed on Nasdaq

South Korean natural killer (NK) cell drugmaker NKMax Co. on Wednesday said its US subsidiary NKGen Biotech on Monday was listed on the Nasdaq Global Market through Graf Acquisition Corp. IV, a special purpose acquisition company.

NKGen Biotech is traded under the ticker NKGN.

NKGen Biotech raised $52 million (70.1 billion won) in investment through the listing. NKMax also directly invested $10 million in South Korea.

The listing is expected to add momentum to NKGen Biotech’s global clinical trials of super NK cell therapy. It is also testing candidate treatments for Alzheimer's disease and solid tumors.

“Our team has worked tirelessly to optimize our natural killer cell therapy platform with the goal to bring both autologous and allogeneic programs to the clinic for neurodegenerative diseases and cancer, respectively,” NKGen Biotech CEO Paul Song said. “We believe that being a public company will help us accelerate our clinical plans and programs.”

“NKGen is doing such important work to bring hope to those suffering from neurodegenerative and other diseases,” said James Graf, who newly joined the company as its interim chief financial officer.

Write to Ye-Na Kim at yena@hankyung.com