Gilead Sciences to acquire Kite Pharma

Gilead Sciences, Inc. and Kite Pharma, Inc. announced that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement pursuant to which Gilead will acquire Kite for $180.00 per share in cash. 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 is an industry leader in the emerging field of cell therapy, which uses a patient�s own immune cells to fight cancer. The company has developed engineered cell therapies that express either a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) or an engineered T cell receptor (TCR), depending on the type of cancer. Kite�s most advanced therapy candidate, axicabtagene ciloleucel (axi-cel), is a CAR T therapy currently under priority review by the 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 29 November 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.