NKT Therapeutics Inc.
This article was originally published in Start Up
Executive Summary
In therapies that target the immune system, T cells have become an important target because of the role they play in cell-mediated immunity, directing macrophages, natural killer cells, and cytotoxic T lymphocytes towards invaders. But a subset of T cells, called natural killer T cells, may afford more precise control because they straddle both the adaptive immune system and the more generalized innate immune system that reacts more rapidly and non-specifically. NKT Therapeutics hopes to take that refinement one step further by focusing on a subset of NKT cells that don't vary from individual to individual. Moreover, the invariant T-cell receptor that they carry is identical in everyone.