Kite Sells $40M in Cellular Blood Cancer Treatments

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Kite, a Santa Monica-based subsidiary of Gilead Sciences Inc., sold $40 million of its personalized blood cancer therapy in the first quarter, which beat an $18 million consensus forecast for Yescarta.

But shares of the Foster City-based drug maker fell nearly 8 percent to $66.88 on May 2, the day after an earnings report that reported revenues well below analysts’ expectations.

Gilead reported $1.5 billion in net income (or $1.17 per share) for the quarter ended March 31, compared with $2.7 billion (or $2.05 per share), for the same period last year. At the same time, revenue fell to $5.1 billion from $6.5 billion.

It suffered largely because of declining sales from its HIV and hepatitis C drugs, according to its financial filing.

The biopharmaceutical giant bought Kite Pharma Inc. last summer for nearly $12 billion. It then won federal approval for Kite’s personalized therapy for adults with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The CAR-T cancer treatment, sold as Yescarta, transforms a patient’s immune cells to target cancer.

But just after Gilead’s earning release, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the approval of a Kymriah CAR-T therapy from drug maker Novartis, which will compete for the same non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients.

Health business reporter Dana Bartholomew can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @_DanaBart.

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