On Mar. 13, 2026, ImmunityBio announced the successful completion of manufacturing engineering programs, NK2022 and NK2023, establishing a safe, reproducible, and scalable leukapheresis-to-manufacturing pathway for its autologous memory cytokine-enhanced natural killer (M-ceNK) cell therapy platform.

In addition, a Phase I program (QUILT-3.076; NCT04898543) combining M-ceNK with ANKTIVAÒ (nogapendekin alfa inbakicept-pmln) was completed in patients with relapsed or refractory tumors demonstrating safety following infusion of the M-ceNK drug product. Collectively, these programs enrolled 74 subjects, including both healthy donors and patients with cancer, and generated the foundational process development and robotic automation datasets required to support first-in-human clinical translation.

Across both programs, 64 subjects successfully completed apheresis collection across healthy and cancer subjects without procedure-related serious adverse events (SAEs). Collected cells were stored and used for process development and validation.

Among the 64 completed apheresis subjects, 10 cancer subjects received their collected cells following ImmunityBio’s NK cell enrichment process. A total of 23 doses were administered to patients demonstrating successful repeat dosing and cryo-banking of M-ceNK cells. No SAEs were reported in the 10 cancer subjects during their treatment cycles.

Post-collection immune profiling demonstrated preserved NK cell activity and phenotype in healthy donors and in cancer patients, including those with prior exposure to systemic therapy. Critically, NK cells derived from cancer patients demonstrated cytotoxic activity equivalent to that of healthy donor-derived NK cells against NK-resistant cell lines representing multiple histologies, including breast, Merkel cell, ovarian, chordoma, medulloblastoma, glioblastoma, adenocarcinoma, and lymphoma.

The cytokine interleukin-15 (IL-15) plays a crucial role in the immune system by affecting the development, maintenance, and function of key immune cells—NK and CD8+ killer T cells—that are involved in killing cancer cells. By activating NK cells, ANKTIVA^® overcomes the tumor escape phase of clones resistant to T cells and restores memory T cell activity with resultant prolonged duration of complete response.

A key component in the Company’s BioShield platform, ANKTIVA is a first-in-class IL-15 agonist IgG1 fusion complex, consisting of an IL-15 mutant (IL-15N72D) fused with an IL-15 receptor alpha, which binds with high affinity to IL-15 receptors on NK, CD4+, and CD8+ T cells. This fusion complex of ANKTIVA^® mimics the natural biological properties of the membrane-bound IL-15 receptor alpha, delivering IL-15 by dendritic cells and driving the activation and proliferation of NK cells with the generation of memory killer T cells that have retained immune memory against these tumor clones.