NKA Bio

Market position

NKA Bio is an early-stage, preclinical entrant in trauma resuscitation and critical care therapeutics, with no approved product. It is listed among Maryland life sciences companies and has been compared with companies such as Perfusion Medical, Vivacelle Bio and NuvOx Therapeutics. No Series A or later institutional financing, acquisition or valuation has been publicly disclosed.

NKA Bio's stated differentiators are the field-deployable format of NKA01 — temperature stable, low volume and packaged in a prefilled syringe for use by EMS before hospital arrival — and its computational antibody discovery approach. Management states that its platform screens millions of antibodies in silico and has predicted the best binders with roughly 80 percent accuracy to date, compared with 12 percent cited from a leading publication, allowing it to build an antibody pipeline at a fraction of typical pharmaceutical discovery cost. The underlying science derives from decades of NIH-funded research into the body's response to hemorrhage by the company's scientific founder.

Technology

The company develops therapeutic antibodies using an in-house platform (described as the Smol mAb Platform) combining in silico drug design, computational screening, phage display, antibody engineering, assay development and bioprocess/manufacturing development. NKA01 is an anti-shock toxin monoclonal antibody formulated for temperature stability and low injection volume so it can be carried and administered in the field. The stated screening approach evaluates millions of antibody candidates computationally to predict binders before wet-lab validation.

Go-to-market

NKA Bio is pursuing a regulated drug development path, targeting the start of human clinical trials and FDA approval, while using U.S. Air Force SBIR contracts and defense-oriented use cases such as combat casualty care to fund and validate development. Accelerator participation and partnerships with national laboratory and academic trauma centers support technical development and future trial access. NKA01 is positioned for use within existing EMS treatment protocols and in hospital settings.

Emergency medical services and prehospital care providers, trauma centers and ICUs, and military/defense medicine customers focused on combat casualty care. Its addressable population is framed around U.S. trauma statistics cited by the company: about 990,000 patients transported by ambulance to trauma centers annually, 210,000 requiring ICU care, 44,000 dying at trauma centers despite best care, and 90,000 who do not survive long enough to reach a hospital.

Geography

Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, with R&D laboratory space at 2401 West Belvedere Avenue in the Sinai/LifeBridge Health BioIncubator. The company has engaged with partners in Knoxville, Tennessee through the Techstars Industries of the Future Accelerator, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee Medical Center trauma program.

History

Susan Gann Hibbs and her son Lewis C. Hibbs III launched NKA Bio in February 2023 to continue the work of Donald S. Gann, MD, who had founded Shock Therapeutics Biotech before his death in 2020 and who retained title to his inventions. A Form D filing reporting a $30,000 equity offering was made in April 2023. In 2024 the company joined the third cohort of the Techstars Industries of the Future Accelerator in Knoxville, Tennessee, running March 11 to June 6, 2024, and received a 2024 Air Force SBIR Phase I award of $72,672 for "Anti-Shock Toxin Antibody Drug for Combat Casualty Care." A SBIR Phase II award of $1,245,837 began on July 15, 2025, and the company announced the roughly $1.25 million AFWERX contract on November 18, 2025.

Risks & controversies

NKA Bio is preclinical: NKA01 has only in vivo proof of concept with a prototype and a selected lead candidate, and the company's timeline to the clinic is explicitly conditioned on obtaining further funding and support. An earlier public target of beginning human trials by the end of 2025 and FDA approval by 2030 has not been shown to be met, with the Phase II SBIR award beginning mid-2025. The company is small, with roughly five employees, is dependent on U.S. Air Force SBIR contracts for the bulk of its disclosed financing, and is led by family members of the scientific founder.