ImmunityBio to merge with NantKwest Inc.

ImmunityBio, a privately-held immunotherapy company, and NantKwest, Inc. a clinical-stage, natural killer cell-based therapeutics company, have announced they have entered into an agreement to merge in a stock-for-stock transaction. The combination will create a leading immunotherapy and cell therapy company focused on oncology and infectious disease.Together, ImmunityBio and NantKwest will have a broad, clinical-stage pipeline – including 13 assets in clinical trials and 11 in Phase II to III – as well as a robust early stage pipeline to address other difficult to treat cancers. The combination of NantKwest’s Natural Killer (NK) cell platform and ImmunityBio’s immunotherapy fusion protein, immunomodulator, and adenovirus platforms have already resulted in complete responses in late stage, difficult to treat metastatic cancers. To date complete responses have been noted in patients with second line or greater metastatic pancreatic cancer, triple-negative breast cancer, head and neck cancer, and Merkel Cell Carcinoma. This strong track record of combination immunotherapies across the two companies’ platforms supports the potential of the combined assets to transform the future of immunotherapy beyond checkpoints by synergizing NantKwest’s cell-based therapies with ImmunityBio’s immunotherapy platforms.Following the closing of the transaction, the combined company will assume the ImmunityBio name and continue to be listed on the NASDAQ exchange. However, the combined company ticker symbol is expected to be changed to IBRX.