Kite to spend as much as $530 million on rights to AIS programs

US autologous T-cell therapy product specialist Kite Pharma (Nasdaq: KITE) has entered into a worldwide research and license agreement with Alpine Immune Sciences (AIS), a privately-held fledgling biotechnology company, to discover and develop protein-based immunotherapies targeting the immune synapse to treat cancer.

AIS will grant Kite an exclusive license to two programs from its transmembrane immunomodulatory protein (TIP) technology, which Kite plans to further engineer into chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and T cell receptor (TCR) product candidates. This collaboration will accelerate Kite's efforts to establish the next generation of engineered T cell therapies specifically designed to overcome the inhibitory mechanisms present in the tumor microenvironment.

Arie Belldegrun, chairman, president and chief executive Kite, said: "We believe the ability of AIS' TIP technology to modulate the immune synapse can be incorporated into engineered T cell therapies to advance CAR and TCR product candidates into multiple tumor types. This collaboration is another example of Kite's continuing commitment to advancing our pipeline through transformative technologies grounded in innovative science."