Kite Pharma, a California-based biopharmaceutical company that develops innovative cancer immunotherapies, announced plans today to open a new biologics manufacturing facility in Frederick County that will produce innovative cell therapies for cancer patients. The new 20-acre site will be located within the Urbana Corporate Center and brings high-paying job opportunities to Frederick County.
“This is great news for Frederick County,” Frederick County Executive Jan Gardner said. “Our businesses on are on the leading edge of finding the cure for cancer. We’re excited to welcome Kite to our life science and biopharma family. We were pleased to fast-track their project and want them to know our support will continue into the future. Frederick County is a great place to do business.”
According to a press release:
“This new facility in Urbana builds on our substantial technical capabilities and rapid progress in making personalized chimeric antigen receptor T and T cell receptor cell therapies for people with cancer,” said Tim Moore, Executive Vice President of Technical Operations at Kite. “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 Urbana 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.”
Tom Natelli, owner of Urbana developer Natelli Communities, said: “It takes a coordinated effort by Frederick County, working in concert with the local business community, to meet the unique requirements of Global Companies like Kite (Gilead). Today’s news was largely made possible by Jan Gardner’s leadership and commitment to bringing high-quality job opportunities to Frederick County for the long-term benefit of our community. Jan and her professional staff have been just outstanding, and I doubt any other regional jurisdiction could have delivered the way she and her team did to pave the way for this fantastic outcome for the County.”
At the new facility, Kite will continue work on a cutting-edge treatment for cancer called CART therapy, which uses bioengineering to retrain a patient’s infection-fighting white blood cells to destroy cancer cells.
Read the full press release for more information.
