Gilead Sciences Will Collaborate with Pfizer Over This Therapy

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It was announced this week that Kite Pharma Inc., a subsidiary of Gilead Sciences, has entered into a collaboration with pharma giant Pfizer to evaluate a combination of its CAR-T therapy Yescarta that was recently approved with Pfizer’s utomilumab.

Utomilumab is a 4-1BB agonist that is used to treat refractory large B-cell lymphoma. Yescarta was the second CAR-T therapy to gain FDA approval and was approved in October of last year.

The phase I/II study will be sponsored by Kite and will begin this year with the results used to find options for further development of this combination. The results will also be used to search for similar combinations between Kite’s engineered T-cell products and utomilumab.

Dr David Chang, worldwide head of research and development and chief medical officer at Kite, remarked, “We are pleased to collaborate with Pfizer on this study with utomilumab, which adds to the growing number of combination approaches we are exploring with Yescarta for patients living with lymphoma.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Gilead Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: GILD) nor Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and have not been compensated for this article.