Kite Pharma, a Gilead Company, has leased a new 177,000 square-foot facility in the Netherlands for manufacturing cell therapies. The 117,000 square-foot site in Hoofddorp will allow Kite to manufacture and deliver its cell therapies to people living with cancer in Europe. The plant will employ 300 workers when fully operational in 2020.
 
The facility will engineer and produce innovative cell therapies, including axicabtagene ciloleucel, a Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell (CAR T) therapy that is currently under review by the EMA and currently approved in the US as Yescarta.
 
“We are pleased to be leading a new frontier of cancer innovation that is bringing hope for people living with cancer,” said John Milligan, PhD, Gilead’s president and chief executive officer. “This new European manufacturing facility will enable personalized cell therapies to be manufactured in closer geographic proximity to the patients who will receive them, potentially shortening the turnaround time for people who urgently need care.”
 
Kite also recently purchased a building in Santa Monica, California (USA) from Astellas Pharma that will be used for cell therapy research, development and the expansion of clinical manufacturing capabilities. Additionally, Kite leased a 26,000 square-foot facility in Gaithersburg, MD to support its new agreement with the National Cancer Institute aimed at developing cell therapies targeting patient-specific tumor neoantigens.
 
“We are proud to be at the forefront of advancing cell therapy, which we believe has the potential to transform cancer treatment,” said Alessandro Riva, MD, Gilead’s executive vice president, Oncology Therapeutics & Head, Cell Therapy. “The addition of these three new facilities and the expanded CRADA with our research collaborators at the NCI will help us bring cell therapies to more people with cancer around the world.”