INmune Bio acquires LUMICKS' z-Movi® Cell Avidity Analyzer to accelerate the development of its NK cell platform for cancer treatments

AMSTERDAM, July 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- LUMICKS, a leading next generation life science tools company renowned for its innovative platforms for Dynamic Single-Molecule and Cell Avidity analysis, has installed its ground-breaking z-Movi® Cell Avidity Analyzer at INmune Bio (NASDAQ: INMB).

INmune Bio is a clinical stage biotechnology company developing new therapies that modulate the innate immune system to treat cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's. Its Natural Killer Cell Priming Platform, INKmune® is a "pseudokine" which drives a patient's own natural killer (NK) cells to memory-type NK cells which kill persistent tumors that survive initial treatments.

INmune Bio is employing the z-Movi cell avidity analysis platform to demonstrate that the mechanism of action of the tumor-priming is the increase in NK cell:tumor cell avidity. Early data acquired by the z-Movi support their hypothesis that increased cell avidity enhances NK cell killing of tumor cells. This allows screening of batches of INKmune for potency and provides a potential biomarker of in vivo activity by measuring the tumor avidity of NK cells isolated from patients before and after INKmune treatment.

"The z-Movi is the first high throughput tool I have seen to reliably measure cell:cell avidity, allowing us to dissect the temporal nature of the formation of NK cell:tumor cell synapse as well as the critical components required for synapse stability and NK cell triggering. These data are incredibly valuable for our continued development of INKmune but, equally importantly, establishing the mechanism of action of INKmune as "increasing NK avidity" gives us a perfect tool and assay to measure potency of batches of INKmune, which is required by drug regulatory agencies" said Professor Lowdell, CSO of INmune Bio.

The z-Movi® Cell Avidity Analyzer is a novel platform that measures the binding strength between target and immune cells, which is a key event in the mode of action of immune products. Furthermore, the z-Movi platform provides these measurements across a large population of cells, rapidly, with single-cell resolution. Cell avidity solutions have the potential to shorten the drug development cycle for adoptive cell therapies and other immune-therapies and reduce failure rates in clinical trials.

"We are excited to work together with INmune Bio, a pioneer in immunotherapy that harnesses the innate immunity of patients to combat solid and liquid cancers," said Dr. Andrea Candelli, CSO and co-founder of LUMICKS. "We strive to provide the benefits of fast, predictive, and reproducible cell avidity measurements to partners like INmune, in order to continue to advance science and accelerate the entry of cell-based therapies into clinical trials."

For more information about the z-Movi, please visit https://lumicks.com/products/z-movi  .

About LUMICKS

LUMICKS is a leading life science tools company that develops equipment for Dynamic Single-Molecule and Cell Avidity analysis, two rapidly emerging areas in biology research and immuno-oncology. Built upon innovative technologies, such as optical tweezers (Nobel Prize for Physics 2018) and STED super-resolution microscopy (Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2014), LUMICKS tools facilitate the understanding of life to the smallest detail.

LUMICKS tools allow researchers to build the crucial and as yet unfinished bridge between structure and function at both a molecular and a cellular level. This is achieved by applying and measuring forces around biological interactions, enabling the detailed real-time analysis of underlying biological mechanisms. LUMICKS' C-Trap® Optical Tweezers – Fluorescence & Label-free Microscopy, allows scientists to analyze complex biological processes in real-time. Similarly, the z-Movi® Cell Avidity Analyzer enables the measurement and selection of immune cells based on their real-time interactions with target cells. The company was founded in 2014 as an academic spin-off from the research group of Prof. Gijs Wuite, Prof. Erwin Peterman, and Prof. Iddo Heller at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. For more information, visit the company's website at www.lumicks.com.

About INmune Bio

INmune Bio, Inc. is a publicly traded (NASDAQ: INMB) clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing treatments that target the innate immune system to fight disease. INmune Bio has two product platforms. The DN-TNF product platform utilizes dominant-negative technology to selectively neutralize soluble TNF, a key driver of innate immune dysfunction and mechanistic target of many diseases. DN-TNF is currently being developed for COVID-19 complications (Quellor™), cancer (INB03™), Alzheimer's and Treatment Resistant Depression (XPro1595), and NASH (LIVNate™). The Natural Killer Cell Priming Platform includes INKmune™ aimed at priming the patient's NK cells to eliminate minimal residual disease in patients with cancer. INmune Bio's product platforms utilize a precision medicine approach for the treatment of a wide variety of hematologic malignancies, solid tumors and chronic inflammation. To learn more, please visit www.inmunebio.com.

For further information, please contact
Name: Kassandra Barbetsea, PR & Marketing
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Email: PR@lumicks.com 
Company: LUMICKS