Kite Pharma to get $250 million from its KTE-C19 partnership in Japan

Kite Pharma (Nasdaq: KITE) has entered into a strategic partnership for axicabtagene ciloleucel (approved USAN for KTE-C19) in Japan with pharma major Daiichi Sankyo (TYO: 4568).

Axicabtagene ciloleucel, US cancer drug developer Kite’s lead product candidate, is an investigational therapy in which a patient's T cells are engineered to express a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) to target the antigen CD19, a protein expressed on the cell surface of B-cell lymphomas and leukemias, and redirect the T cells to kill cancer cells.

In December 2016 Kite reported initiating a rolling submission of a Biological License Application (BLA) to US Food and Drug Administration for KTE-C19 as a treatment for refractory, aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).