NK cell therapies have experienced both significant excitement and notable setbacks. For Raphaël Ognar, President & CEO and Co-Founder of NKILT Therapeutics, however, the fundamental opportunity remains compelling: to create an effective, scalable and genuinely off-the-shelf form of cell therapy.
Speaking in Oxford Global’s thought leadership series, Ognar argued that the future of the field should not be framed simply as a contest between NK cells, T cells or other immune-cell types. The more important question is how those cells are engineered and whether that engineering can translate into meaningful clinical benefit.
Moving NK Cells Into Solid Tumours
One of the biggest challenges is generating stronger clinical evidence, particularly in solid tumours.
Ognar noted that while there are encouraging signals for NK-cell approaches in haematological malignancies, evidence in solid tumours remains much less established. The challenge is therefore not only choosing the right cell type, but engineering it to overcome issues such as limited persistence and to deliver sufficiently deep and durable responses.
For developers, this means building stronger preclinical evidence, developing relevant assays and then validating those hypotheses through carefully designed clinical programmes.
Manufacturing Is Not a Side Issue
Manufacturing and scalability are equally central to the future of the technology.
Ognar highlighted the potential of allogeneic NK-cell therapies to create a genuinely off-the-shelf product, potentially improving accessibility while reducing the cost and complexity associated with patient-specific autologous approaches.
That does not mean manufacturing will be straightforward. Batch consistency, manufacturing failure, scalability and cost of goods remain significant development challenges across the cell therapy sector.
His argument, however, is that these challenges should be treated as engineering problems to be solved rather than reasons to abandon the modality. He draws a parallel with biologics manufacturing, where technologies once considered difficult to scale became established industrial platforms.
If allogeneic cell therapies can ultimately achieve substantially lower manufacturing costs, the impact could extend beyond scientific feasibility to the broader commercial sustainability of the sector.
The Need for Evidence — and Collaboration
For NK-cell therapy to regain wider confidence, Ognar believes the industry ultimately needs convincing clinical data.
Positive responses in carefully selected indications could help restart a virtuous cycle: stronger evidence builds confidence, confidence attracts investment, and investment enables further clinical development.
Collaboration will also matter. Ognar called for companies and researchers to share lessons from both successes and setbacks where possible, helping the field collectively understand what works — and what does not.
The objective should also remain pragmatic: avoid unnecessary complexity, identify indications where a technology has the strongest probability of demonstrating benefit, and generate the evidence needed to move forward.
A Broader Future for Cell Therapy
The wider message is therefore not simply about the future of NK cells.
It is about whether the next generation of cell therapies can combine **better engineering, stronger clinical evidence, scalable manufacturing and substantially.
