=Kite Pharma (KITE) to be acquired by Gilead (GILD) for $180/share

• Kite's product, Yescarta, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in October 2017, a type of therapy called CART (short for: chimeric antigen receptor T-cell). It costs $373,000 per patient, and involves a laborious process to re-engineer patients' own white blood cells, known as T-cells. 

Kite Pharma confirms agreement to be acquired by Gilead (GILD) for $180/share in cash, or approximately $11.9 bln

The transaction, which values Kite at approximately $11.9 billion, was unanimously approved by both the Gilead and Kite Boards of Directors and is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter of 2017. The transaction will provide opportunities for diversification of revenues, and is expected to be neutral to earnings by year three and accretive thereafter.

• Kite's most advanced therapy candidate, axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel), is a CAR T therapy currently under priority review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It is expected to be the first to market as a treatment for refractory aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which includes diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), transformed follicular lymphoma (TFL) and primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma (PMBCL). The FDA has set a target action date of November 29, 2017 under the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA). A marketing authorization application (MAA) has also been filed for axi-cel for the treatment of relapsed/refractory DLBCL, TFL and PMBCL with the European Medicines Agency (EMA), representing the first submission in Europe for a CAR T therapy. Approval in Europe is expected in 2018. Kite has additional candidates in clinical trials in both hematologic cancers and solid tumors, including KITE-585, a CAR T therapy candidate that targets BCMA expressed in multiple myeloma.