Kite, a Gilead company, focuses on the development of cancer immunotherapies, specifically chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T therapies and T cell receptor engineered cell therapies.
Its new 20-acre site, based in Frederick County, Maryland, will expand Kite’s capacity to produce its cell therapies. According to Kite, CAR-T therapies require many complex and carefully controlled, multi-step processes.
A spokesperson for Kite told us, “Cell therapy manufacturing is a unique and highly scientific process. Unlike traditional biomanufacturing, current CAR-T therapies require a complex and carefully controlled, multi-step process that can be difficult to optimize.”
“Expanding and investing in our manufacturing capabilities is essential to ensuring we are able to meet the needs of CAR-T patients,” the spokesperson continued.
Currently, Kite has one commercially available CAR-T cancer therapy, Yescarta, and is investigating T cell receptor cell therapies for solid tumors.
Tim Moore, EVP of technical operations at Kite, said in a statement that the company can build and design the Maryland facility to be tailored to its own proprietary innovative processes for CAR-T manufacture, as well as to meet the future needs for cell therapies as it continues to innovate its procedures.
Kite anticipates commercial production to begin at the site by late 2021.
