Sanofi and Kiadis, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative ‘off the shelf’ natural killer (NK) cell-based medicines for the treatment of life-threatening diseases, entered into a definitive agreement under which Sanofi will make a public offer to acquire the entire share capital of Kiadis for approximately $359 million.
 
“We believe the Kiadis ‘off the shelf’ K-NK cell technology platform will have broad application against liquid and solid tumors, and create synergies with Sanofi’s emerging immuno-oncology pipeline, providing opportunities for us to pursue potential best-in-disease approaches,” said John Reed, global head of research and development, Sanofi.
 
“Kiadis’ vision is to bring novel cell-based medicines to people with life-threatening diseases, and this transaction will help achieve that vision,” said Arthur Lahr, chief executive officer, Kiadis. “After the discontinuation of our lead product candidate and subsequent reorganization in 2019, we restarted Kiadis in 2020 as an entirely new company focused solely on the proprietary and differentiated NK-cell platform that we obtained through the acquisition of Cytosen Therapeutics. Sanofi’s offer is a clear testimony to the uniqueness of our NK-cell platform and the rapid success of Kiadis’ transformation.
 
Kiadis’ proprietary platform is based on allogeneic or ‘off-the-shelf’ NK cells from a healthy donor. NK cells seek and identify malignant cancer cells and have broad application across various tumor types. The platform has the potential to make products rapidly and economically available for a broad patient population across a wide range of indications.
 
Kiadis’ NK cell-based medicines will be developed alone and in combination with Sanofi’s existing platforms.
 
Kiadis’ pipeline of NK cell therapies includes:
 
• K-NK002 is in a Phase 2 clinical study evaluating NK cells to prevent post-transplant relapse in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndromes. The Phase 2 trial will be conducted in collaboration with premier U.S. transplant centers.
 
• K-NK003 is a Phase 1 study evaluating NK cells for patients with relapsed or refractory AML.
 
• KNK-ID-101 is a program evaluating the properties of K-NK cells and their suitability to fight SARS-CoV-2 and the option to develop K-NK cells as a post-exposure pre-emptive therapy for COVID-19 in high risk patients. Kiadis plans to initiate a phase 1/2a clinical trial evaluating use of K-NK cells to treat COVID-19 patients with government grant funding.