Developing engineered natural killer cell therapies for cancer and fibrotic disease
Engineered immune-cell treatments can be difficult to manufacture for individual patients and may cause serious immune-related side effects. Some cancers remain resistant to treatment. Harmful cells also drive tissue scarring and autoimmune disease, creating a need for approaches that target disease while limiting damage to healthy tissue.
Inkocell Therapeutics is developing natural killer cell treatments equipped with a receptor designed for these immune cells. Its preclinical platform aims to target cancer and other harmful cells with scalable treatments made without patient-specific manufacturing.
What stands out about Inkocell Therapeutics
SNSF awarded Mathieu Girardin at EPFL CHF 181,206 for predecessor CAR-NK cardiac-fibrosis research, running October 2023–March 2025.
Co-founder Angela Madurga Alonso won EPFL’s CHF 50,000 Isabelle Musy Award in April 2023 for the founding cardiac-fibrosis therapy project.
Inkocell originated from EPFL research on engineered natural killer cells by Mathieu Girardin and Angela Madurga Alonso.
Inkocell was selected for MassChallenge Switzerland’s four-month 2024 accelerator, with expert mentoring and investor access. It also joined Nucleate’s Activator programme.
Inkocell’s predecessor project Anake received a CHF 100,000 EPFL Innogrant in April 2023 to develop its cardiac-fibrosis therapy.
Inkocell’s founding cardiac-fibrosis project showed targeted killing of activated fibroblasts in laboratory tests of engineered NK cells.
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