science

Kite Pharma

Kite Pharma is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kite Pharma rather than just read about it. In short: Kite Pharma, Inc. is an American biotechnology company that develops cancer immunotherapy products with a primary focus on genetically engineered autologous CAR T cell therapy - a cell-based therapy which relies on chimeric antigen receptors and T cells. Founded in 2009, and based in Santa Monica, California, it was acquired by Gilead Sciences in 2017.

Key takeaways

Kite Pharma belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kite Pharma to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kite Pharma from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kite Pharma, Inc. is an American biotechnology company that develops cancer immunotherapy products with a primary focus on genetically engineered autologous CAR T cell therapy - a cell-based therapy which relies on chimeric antigen receptors and T cells. Founded in 2009, and based in Santa Monica, California, it was acquired by Gilead Sciences in 2017.

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.

Lead product Axicabtagene ciloleucel (KTE-C19, ZUMA-3, YESCARTA) was an investigational therapy (for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)) in which a patient's T cells were genetically modified to express a chimeric antigen receptor designed to target the antigen CD19, a protein expressed on the cell surface of B-cell lymphomas and leukemias. It garnered a US FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation (Dec 2015) for the treatment of patients with refractory diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), primary mediastinal B cell lymphoma (PMBCL), and transformed follicular lymphoma (TFL). It was approved for use in the United States under the brand name YESCARTA in October 2017.

Development history

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.

2013 In December, the company announced data in its lead clinical development program with the NCI, demonstrating that Kite's most advanced immunotherapy product candidate – KTE-C19 CAR – can produce robust and durable tumor shrinkage in patients with an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, known as diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL). The clinical data were presented at the 55th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting.

2014 The company announced in March, that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Office of Orphan Products Development granted orphan drug designation for the company's proposed therapy for DLBCL. In June, Kite Pharma entered into an exclusive, worldwide license with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to certain intellectual property related to TCR-based product candidates that target the NY-ESO-1 antigen for the treatment of cancers expressing NY-ESO-1. Kite Pharma announced findings from its ongoing clinical trial in August: 12 of 13 evaluable patients with advanced B-cell malignancies had complete remissions (8 patients) or partial remissions (4 patients) resulting in a 92% objective response rate. The results support Kite Pharma's plan to file an Investigational New Drug (IND) application in the fourth quarter of 2014 to initiate a clinical trial of Kite Pharma's lead CAR-based product candidate, KTE-C19, in patients with DLBCL.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kite Pharma

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kite Pharma claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kite Pharma before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kite Pharma ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kite Pharma

In research: Kite Pharma appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kite Pharma in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kite Pharma is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2009 establishments in California, 2014 initial public offerings, 2017 mergers and acquisitions, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kite Pharma outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Kite Pharma in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kite Pharma means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kite Pharma out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kite Pharma in simple terms?

Why does Kite Pharma matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kite Pharma?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kite Pharma.