POLARIS GROUP’S AFFILIATE NANOTEIN TECHNOLOGIES LAUNCHES A REVOLUTIONARY NK CELL ACTIVATION AND EXPA

TAIPEI, Taiwan and VACAVILLE, Calif., June 07, 2023— Polaris Group (TWSE: 6550), a multinational biopharmaceutical company focused on research and development of novel biological drugs for cancer and other metabolic diseases, today announced that Polaris Group’s affiliate, Nanotein Technologies, has just launched GROW-NK, a novel Natural Killer (NK) cell activation and expansion reagent. This reagent is poised to revolutionize the NK cell therapy field by replacing reliance on costly and more importantly – risky – feeder cells during NK cell therapy biomanufacturing. To innovate GROW-NK, Nanotein used their proprietary platform technology, called NanoSparkTM, which Polaris Group manufactures for all Nanotein’s launched and pipeline products, including NanoSpark™ STEM-T Soluble T Cell Activator that  designed to revolutionize T cell expansion, including CAR-T cells.

With Polaris Group’s 41% ownership stake of Nanotein Technologies, the ownership stake and strategic partnership between Polaris and Nanotein signify a close collaboration aimed at advancing research and development efforts, expanding market reach, and ultimately delivering innovative and effective treatments for cancer and other diseases.

NK cell based therapies are a new, exciting type of cancer cell therapy with a few notable advantages over those that are T cell based, namely: 1) they’re far less likely to cause graft versus host disease (GvHD), and 2) NK cells have receptors (e.g. CD16) that allow them to be targeted to cancer cells with co-infused antibodies and unleash killing through a process called antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC).

Currently, NK cell therapies are manufactured by mixing them with irradiated cancerous “feeder” cell lines that stimulate the NK cells to grow, which is:

• Costly
• Complex
• Labor-intensive
• A major concern for regulatory authorities
• Risky (i.e. this legacy approach infuses the therapy with the risk of causing the patient a new viral infection & growth of a new cancer from improperly irradiated feeder cells).

Nanotein’s New NanoSpark™ GROW-NK Soluble Activator Eliminates these Critical Pain Points

More information about Nanotein Technologies and their best-in-class cellular therapy reagents is available on their website: https://nanoteintech.com