Kite Pharma Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, opened a new industrial manufacturing plant in El Segundo on Monday.

The Santa Monica-based company will manufacture chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell product candidates used for clinical trials in the treatment of patients with blood cancer, at the 43,500-square-foot plant.

“We anticipate that the new facility will make a huge difference for our patients,” said Timothy Moore, Kite’s executive vice president of technical operations.

Adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport, the facility will be able to accommodate up to 5,000 patient therapies per year from across the country. The company plans commercial launch of a clinical therapy, known as KTE-C19, in 2017.

Kite Pharma has a plant in Santa Monica where it makes products for use in clinical trials, but the facility is not large enough to produce a product on a commercial scale.

The company hopes the new plant will help to receive a Food and Drug Administration approval for the launch of the new cancer treatment.