Gilead's Kite unit adds industry vets to its executive team

Kite Pharma, which was acquired in 2017 by Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD) in a transaction valued at around $12 billion, announced two new additions to the company’s leadership team.

Charles Calderaro will join Kite as global head of technical operations, and Dr Ken Takeshita, will take up the post of global head of clinical development. Both will report directly to Christi Shaw, chief executive of Kite.

Mr Calderaro will be responsible for leading all aspects of Kite’s technical operations, including process development, manufacturing, supply chain management, quality assurance and end-to-end optimization for the company’s commercial and pipeline products, effective December 9, 2019. He joins Kite from BioMarin Pharmaceutical (Nasdaq: BMRN), where he currently holds the position of senior vice president, global manufacturing and is responsible for the strategic oversight and leadership of the company’s international operations network. Previous to this, Mr Calderaro was the VP of technical product management at Genentech leading the CMC life cycle management of the company’s small molecule product portfolio in Basel, Switzerland.