Gilead Sciences has completed its previously announced $11.9-billion acquisition of Kite Pharma. The deal was first announced in August 2017. As a result of the completion of the merger, Kite has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Gilead.

Kite is engaged in the emerging field of cell therapy, which uses a patient’s own immune cells to fight cancer. The company has developed engineered cell therapies that express either a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) or an engineered T cell receptor (TCR), depending on the type of cancer. Kite’s most advanced therapy candidate, axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel), is a CAR-T therapy currently under priority review by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and for which some analysts have projected blockbuster status. The therapy is indicated as a treatment for refractory aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which includes diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), transformed follicular lymphoma (TFL) and primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma (PMBCL). The FDA has set a target action date for review of November 29, 2017. A marketing authorization application has also been filed for axi-cel for the treatment of relapsed/refractory DLBCL, TFL, and PMBCL with the European Medicines Agency. Approval in Europe is expected in 2018, according to the company. A recent analysis by Clarivate Analytics projects sales of more than $900 million by 2021.

Source: Gilead Sciences