21 February 2019 - - US-based cellular and immune therapeutics company Gamida Cell Ltd. (NASDAQ: GMDA) has forged an agreement with genome editing company Editas Medicine, Inc to evaluate the potential use of Editas Medicine's CRISPR technology to edit NAM-NK cells, which are natural killer cells that have been expanded using Gamida Cell's proprietary nicotinamide-based, or NAM, technology, the company said.

Through this agreement, the companies aim to discover optimized NAM-NK cells that could be used to improve the treatment of hematologic malignancies (blood cancers) and solid tumors.

Under the terms of the agreement, Gamida Cell and Editas Medicine will engage in joint research to evaluate unnamed targets by combining Gamida Cell's proprietary NAM-based cell expansion technology with Editas Medicine's CRISPR technology.

The research initiative is focused on exploring the potential to edit NAM-NK cells to further optimize their tumor-killing properties, and compare the function of the edited and unedited cells in inducing NK cell tumor clearance.

Gamida Cell applied the capabilities of its NAM-based cell expansion technology to highly functional NK cells to develop NAM-NK, an innate immunotherapy for the treatment of hematologic and solid tumors in combination with standard-of-care antibody therapies.

NAM-NK addresses key limitations of NK cells by increasing the cytotoxicity and in vivo retention and proliferation in the bone marrow and lymphoid organs of NK cells expanded in culture.

NAM-NK is in Phase 1 development through an investigator-sponsored study in patients with refractory non-Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

NAM-NK is an investigational therapy, and its safety and efficacy has not been evaluated by the US Food and Drug Administration or any other health authority.

Gamida Cell is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company leveraging its proprietary technology to develop cell therapies that are designed to cure cancer and rare, serious hematologic diseases.

The company is applying its nicotinamide-, or NAM-, based cell expansion technology to develop a pipeline of products designed to address the limitations of cell therapies.