NantKwest, Inc. (Nasdaq: NK), a clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on harnessing the power of the innate immune system by using natural killer cells to treat cancer, infectious diseases and inflammatory diseases, today announced the appointment of Fatih M. Uckun, M.D., as vice president of research and clinical development. Dr. Uckun will be responsible for spearheading the company’s overall scientific development strategy, including management of the pipeline and clinical development programs.

“Fatih Uckun brings extensive expertise in personalized medicine, oncology and all stages of clinical development,” said Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D., chairman and chief executive officer of NantKwest. “He has deep experience in cancer research, with 20 years in developmental therapeutics and biopharmaceuticals. In addition, Fatih is a prolific biotechnology innovator, inventor of more than 80 patents and author or co-author of 500 peer-reviewed journal articles. We welcome Fatih and look forward to his contributions.”

Prior to joining NantKwest, Dr. Uckun served as president of Ares Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology start-up company. From 2009 to 2015, he was a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and head of Translational Research in Leukemia and Lymphoma of the Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases, where he directed a multi-disciplinary National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded nanomedicine research program. From 2012-2015, Dr. Uckun served as chair of the Biotargeting Working Group at the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer. Earlier, he was chief scientific officer of Jupiter Research Institute and, before that, held senior-level scientific and research positions at Parker Hughes Institute and its cancer center, Paradigm Pharmaceuticals, and the Centralized Immunotoxin Resource Laboratory of the Children’s Cancer Group. He held several professorships and directorships in the Departments of Therapeutic Radiology-Radiation Oncology, Pharmacology, Pediatrics and Biotherapy Institute at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Uckun was the first Holder of the Endowed Hughes Chair in Biotherapy, an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI), an honor society for physician-scientists, and a former recipient of a Stohlman Memorial Scholar Award of the Leukemia Society of America. He was recognized by the Leukemia Society of America for his pioneering R&D and clinical research in development of personalized medicines against CD19+ acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common form of childhood cancer, and Radiation Research Society for his pioneering research on development of effective strategies to overcome radiation resistance in cancer. Dr. Uckun is regarded for his discovery research on human B-cell development and NIAID-funded research efforts to design protein therapeutics against HIV and other viruses. He served as a principal investigator of a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)/US Department of Defense research project aimed at developing a broadly applicable virus neutralizer as a countermeasure against biological weapons. He has received numerous research grant awards from the NCI and served as a peer reviewer on several NIH study sections and special emphasis panels. He served as editor-in-chief of the medical journal Leukemia and Lymphoma and continues to serve on the editorial boards of several medical journals, including the translational research journal EBioMedicine. Dr. Uckun earned his doctor of medicine (M.D.) degree from the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

About NantKwest Inc.

NantKwest (Nasdaq:NK) is a pioneering, next generation, clinical-stage immunotherapy company focused on harnessing the unique power of our immune system using natural killer (NK) cells to treat cancer, infectious diseases and inflammatory diseases. NK cells are the body’s first line of defense due to the innate ability of NK cells to rapidly identify and destroy cells under stress, such as cancer or virally-infected cells.

NantKwest’s unique NK cell-based platform, with the capacity to grow active killer cells as a biological cancer therapy, has been designed to induce cell death against cancer or infected cells by three different modes of action: (1) Direct killing using activated NK cells (aNK) that release toxic granules directly into the cell through cell to cell contact, (2) Antibody-mediated killing using haNKs, which are NK cells engineered to incorporate a high affinity receptor that binds to an administered antibody, enhancing the cancer cell killing effect of that antibody, and (3) Targeted activated killing using taNKs, which are NK cells engineered to incorporate chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to target tumor-specific antigens found on the surface of cancer cells.

Our aNK, haNK and taNK platform addresses certain limitations of T cell therapies including the reduction of risk of serious "cytokine storms" reported after T cell therapy. As an “off-the-shelf” therapy, NantKwest's NK cells do not rely on a patient’s own often compromised immune system. In Phase 1 clinical trials in patients with late stage cancer, NantKwest's NK cells have been successfully administered as an outpatient infusion therapy without any reported severe side effects, even at doses of 10 billion cells.

By leveraging an integrated and extensive genomics and transcriptomics discovery and development engine, together with a pipeline of multiple, clinical-stage, immuno-oncology programs that include a Phase 2 trial for a rare form of melanoma and the planned initiation of a clinical trial of NK cells targeted to breast cancer, we believe NantKwest is uniquely positioned to be the premier immunotherapy company and transform medicine by delivering living drugs in a bag and bringing novel NK cell-based therapies to routine clinical care.

NantKwestJen Hodson562-397-3639jhodson@nantworks.com

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