 NantKwest, Inc. NASDAQ: NK today announced it has received authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration FDA for an Investigational New Drug application to treat patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome ARDS caused by COVID-19 with BM-Allo.MSC, an allogeneic mesenchymal stem cell MSC product derived from human bone marrow. NantKwest has entered into an agreement with the National Marrow Donor Program Be the Match to provide donor material and has developed automated proprietary methods to expand and generate multiple dose forms utilizing a modular, closed system GMP-in-a-box from NantKwest affiliate ImmunityBio, Inc., to expand BM-Allo.MSCs, enabling the scalable manufacture and immediate distribution of cryopreserved BM-Allo.MSC product. 