Gilead follows Kite acquisition with $567m buy
Gilead Sciences has built on its acquisition of cell therapy company Kite Pharma with another purchase.
Announced on Thursday, December 7, in the deal Gilead and Kite will buy Cell Design Labs (CDL), a biotherapeutics company, for up to $567 million.
Kite already has a 12% stake in the company; to take over CDL, Gilead will pay approximately $175 million, with additional payments of up to $322 million.
The deal for Gilead to acquire Kite for $11.9 billion was unanimously approved by both companies’ boards of directors in August.
Kite focuses on chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) therapy; its most advanced therapy candidate is Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel).
In CAR T therapy a patient’s own T-cells are engineered to seek and destroy cancer cells.
In October, Kite’s Yescarta was approved for the treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma by the US Food and Drug Administration.
CDL is developing two propriety technology platforms.
The first is synNotch, a synthetic gene expression system that can be deployed to engineer CAR T-cells that require dual antigen recognition for activation.
The second is Throttle, an “on switch” that modulates CAR T activity using small molecules.
According to the press release, CDL is developing a number of pre-clinical product candidates, including therapies for prostate cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma that use the synNotch technology. Its lead pre-clinical candidate targets multiple myeloma.
John Milligan, Gilead’s president and CEO, said: “This acquisition demonstrates our deep commitment to continuing to invest in future innovation in the field of cellular therapy, both internally and externally.”
Wendell Lim, scientific founder of CDL, added that the acquisition has the potential to significantly advance the field, “ultimately leading to the development of transformative treatments for cancer and other complex diseases”.
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