NKCL Bio Group announced that it had
recently acquired a patent for a stimulant composition for rapid testing of
natural killer cell activity and a test method using the same.
Ph.D. Shin Dong-hyeok of NKCL Bio Group
said, “Normally, NK cells in our body are inactive, but they are activated and
respond in emergencies such as external invasion. In other words, high NK cell
activity means that you can better remove cancer cells and other mutant cells. NKCL
Bio Group has developed a method to activate NK cells in a short time, In fact,
the difference in activity of NK cells between cancer patients and normal
people was confirmed and patent was registered.” “Unlike other companies that
measure activity indirectly by measuring the amount of cytokines, our method measures
NK cell activity of directly kills cancer cells. It measures their ability to
kill," he added.
In the case of the existing NK activation
test, there are too many variables in the method of measuring the amount of
cytokines, so there is a large error in accuracy, which is insufficient to use
as data for diagnosis or treatment. NKCL Bio Group's patented technology is
highly accurate as it directly measures the ability to kill cancer cells.
There are many research results that reveal
NK cell activity can be used to predict disease risk and maintain health as an
indicator of immunity. It can also be used to predict future disease outbreaks.
In particular, since the activity of NK
cells directly affects the anticancer activity of our body, the NK cell
activity test can be used as a screening test for various types of cancer.
Tissue biopsy is not only expensive, side effects that can occur in the process
of removing body tissue are burdenful to patients, but NK cell activity test is
easy to use as a screening test with only a small amount of blood regardless of
patient.
In addition, NK cell activity in various
carcinomas serves as a biomarker for the condition after treatment.
Accordingly, the medical need for an NK cell activity test as a progress
monitoring tool after chemotherapy is also increasing.
Through this patent registration, NKCL Bio
Group secures the reliability of its NK cell activity measurement and Integrated
service connection between biopharmaceutical business areas such as NK
cell-based immunodiagnosis kit, immune cell therapy, bioreagent and NK cell
automatic culture machine, and other anciliary businesses of health functional
food and anti-aging program using NK cell culture medium, will be strengthened.
Meanwhile, the global in vitro diagnostic
device market is worth about $29.8 billion (about 34.4 trillion won) as of
2019, and has grown at an average annual rate of 3.6% over the past five years,
accounting for about 40.5% of the entire diagnostic medical device market.