Kite Pharma, a wholly owned subsidiary of Gilead Sciences, announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Interius BioTherapeutics for a total of $350 million in cash consideration.
Interius BioTherapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company engineering targeted, programmable vectors for the precision delivery of genetic medicines to treat an array of challenging diseases in oncology, autoimmunity and beyond. Leveraging a proprietary platform, Interius has created a differentiated off-the-shelf therapeutic modality designed for broad patient access.
The company’s lead programs aim to overcome the current limitations of ex vivo chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy by creating therapeutic CAR cells directly in the patient’s body. This is done to avoid preconditioning chemotherapy, manufacturing bottlenecks and high costs.
Kite Pharma is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on achieving cures with cell therapy. According to the August 21 deal press release, Kite has treated more patients with CAR T-cell therapy than any other company. Kite has the largest in-house cell therapy manufacturing network in the world, spanning process development, vector manufacturing, clinical trial supply and commercial product manufacturing. The company is based in Santa Monica, California.
This acquisition complements Kite’s expertise in cell therapy by incorporating Interius’s in vivo platform. Interius’s team and operations will integrate into Kite’s established research team, creating a center of excellence in Philadelphia to accelerate the development of next-generation in vivo therapies. This transaction with Interius is expected to reduce Gilead’s GAAP and non-GAAP 2025 EPS by approximately $0.23-$0.25.
TD Cowen is acting as exclusive financial advisor to Kite and Evercore is serving as exclusive financial advisor to Interius.
According to data captured in the LevinPro HC database, this transaction represents the 89th Biotechnology transaction of 2025. There were 138 Biotechnology transactions announced during 2024, and 161 announced during 2023.
