Kite, a Gilead Company (Nasdaq: GILD), announced yesterday that it is planning for a new facility in Frederick County, Maryland.

The facility is to produce innovative cell therapies for cancer patients. It is intended to expand the company's ability to manufacture various chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR T) therapies, including Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel), the company's first commercially available CAR T cancer therapy, and investigational T cell receptor (TCR) cell therapies being evaluated in solid tumours.

Tim Moore, executive vice president of Technical Operations at Kite, said, 'This new facility in Frederick County builds on our substantial technical capabilities and rapid progress in making personalised CAR T and TCR cell therapies for people with cancer. As we advance our industry-leading cell therapy pipeline and seek to help a growing number of people with cancer, expanding and investing in our manufacturing capabilities is essential. With the Frederick County site, we will have the opportunity to build and design the facility tailored to our own innovative processes and with state-of-the-art features that will enable us to meet the future needs for cell therapies.'