Pluristyx to Support Development of Kiadis' K-NK Cell COVID-19 Therapy Funded by $9.5 Million From the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute's BioFabUSA Program

Pluristyx, Inc., a leading chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC), consulting, process development, and tools provider for cell and gene therapy companies, today announced it will be supporting a collaboration between Kiadis Pharma (Kiadis), and the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute's (ARMI) BioFabUSA program working on Kiadis' COVID-19 research and development program, Kiadis' Natural Killer cells, (K-NK-ID101) as a universal countermeasure to fight COVID-19 and future pandemics.

The collaboration is funded via a $9.5 million 2020 CARES act award from ARMI's BioFabUSA program, in partnership with the United States Department of Defense (DoD). The funds will support a Kiadis sponsored Phase 1/2a clinical trial to evaluate K-NK-ID101 in COVID-19 and the scale up of GMP manufacturing. Additionally, Kiadis will collaborate with ARMI/BioFabUSA to establish large-scale manufacturing capacity for K-NK-ID101 in the US that can support the industrialization of K-NK cell therapy. In supporting Kiadis, Pluristyx will provide CMC support for the manufacture and scale-up of product sufficient to respond to pandemic threats such as COVID-19. Pluristyx will also lead in development of cryopreservation processes, perform proof-of-concept studies to enable scale-up for commercial manufacturing, and assist ARMI in establishing their large-scale manufacturing capacity.

"Pluristyx is thrilled to be working to advance Kiadis' novel NK cell therapy to treat patients exposed to and diagnosed with COVID-19. As a proud ARMI/BioFabUSA member company we look forward to assisting in scaling manufacturing and cryopreservation processes to develop a desperately needed tool in the fight against COVID-19 and potentially other pandemic pathogens." - Benjamin Fryer, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, Pluristyx

Established in 2018, Pluristyx Inc. is a privately held small business providing complete cell manufacturing solutions. As an advanced therapy tools company, Pluristyx helps both industrial and academic researchers solve manufacturing challenges in cryopreservation, drug development, regenerative medicine, and cell and gene therapy. The Pluristyx management team has decades of academic and industrial experience supporting every stage of cell therapy product development, from cell banking through the commercial manufacturing of clinical grade material as well as hands-on product and process development laboratory support.