BRIEF—Kite sets up new manufacturing facility in the Netherlands

Kite Pharma, now part of Gilead Sciences, today announced it has leased a new facility in the Netherlands to engineer cell therapies in Europe.

The 117,000 square-foot site in Hoofddorp (SEGRO Park Amsterdam Airport) will enable Kite to efficiently manufacture and deliver its cell therapies to people living with cancer in Europe and will provide more than 300 new jobs 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 European Medicines Agency and which is approved in the USA as Yescarta.

"We are pleased to be leading a new frontier of cancer innovation that is bringing hope for people living with cancer," commented John Milligan, Gilead's president and chief executive, adding: "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."