How it started
History
The company was founded in 2009 by Arie Belldegrun, an Israeli-American oncologist, who served as the company's chairman, president and chief executive officer. Belldegrun had a co-founder in Joshua Kazam, who took on the role of Director.
On August 28, 2017, Gilead Sciences announced that it would acquire Kite Pharma for $11.9 billion in an all-cash deal, a 29% premium on the share price. Gilead made the purchase in large part to bolster sales in the face of the company's declining hepatitis C franchise revenues, a result of declining patient numbers as they were cured, as Kite's sales were anticipated to reach $2 billion per annum. The acquisition was completed in October 2017, when Kite Pharma's Yescarta became the first CAR-T therapy approved by the FDA for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma after two or more lines of systemic therapy. This form of immunotherapy was originally developed by the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the company pays the government to support continuing research.
In 2017, MIT Technology Review ranked Kite Pharma 7th in its annual list of the preceding year's 50 Smartest Companies.
2012
In October, Kite Pharma entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for the development and commercialization of products for the treatment of multiple cancer indications.
From Wikipedia’s article on Kite Pharma, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3