Nkarta (NKTX) TD Cowen 46th Annual Health Care Conference summary

Company overview and clinical focus

• Focused on developing allogeneic, off-the-shelf natural killer (NK) cell therapies for autoimmune diseases, with two main clinical trials: Ntrust-1 (lupus nephritis) and Ntrust-2 (basket study in scleroderma, myositis, vasculitis).

• Two investigator-sponsored trials (ISTs) are ongoing in systemic lupus erythematosus and myasthenia gravis.

• Planning to provide data updates from both main studies within the year, aiming for proof of concept and progression to pivotal trials.

Advantages and administration of NK cell therapy

• NK cell therapies are accessible, off-the-shelf, and do not require patient apheresis; can be administered on demand.

• No cytokine release syndrome or neurotoxicity observed in autoimmune trials; minor toxicities only seen in oncology studies.

• Safety and accessibility may enable outpatient administration in the future, expanding reach to community and rural settings.

Clinical program and dosing strategy

• Dose escalation ongoing, with current plans to move to 4 billion cells per dose, three times, totaling 12 billion cells per course.

• NK cells do not expand significantly in vivo, so the administered dose is the therapeutic dose; multiple doses are given within a week.

• Standard lymphodepletion regimen (fludarabine/cyclophosphamide) harmonized across both trials for optimal B-cell depletion.