Kite Pharma Gains 2% After Management Provides Update To A Phase 1 Study

Shares of Kite Pharma Inc (NASDAQ: KITE) were trading higher by more than 2 percent early Wednesday morning after the company's management provided an update on an ongoing Phase 1 trial at an industry conference.

Kite Pharma's management spoke at the American Association of Cancer Research's annual meeting and discussed updated clinical results from a phase 1 portion involving its lead product candidate, KTE-C19.

KTE-C19 is an investigational therapy used to treat patients with chemorefractory – an aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

The Phase 1 results showed that KTE-C19 achieved rapid and durable responses in patients with chemorefractory disease (objective response rate 71 percent, complete response rate 57 percent).

Related Link: Kite Pharma Presents Updated Phase 1 Results From ZUMA-1 At AACR

David Chang, M.D., Ph.D., Kite's executive vice president, research and development, and chief medical officer, commented, "Today's report affirms the early safety and efficacy profile of KTE-C19 in chemorefractory, aggressive NHL. We are encouraged by the ongoing complete remissions in patients with significant unmet need for new therapies. We remain on track to provide interim data from the pivotal phase 2 portion of the study later this year and to submit the KTE-C19 registration filing to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by the end of 2016."

"The data reported today are important because refractory DLBCL is incurable. Median survival for these patients is short and there is no standard therapy," noted Ronald Levy, M.D., Robert K. Summy and Helen K. Summy, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Lymphoma Program at Stanford University School of Medicine and Associate Director of Translational Science for the Stanford Cancer Institute. "A rate of complete response and durability of response in the ranges of those reported today would be of profound clinical importance if replicated in the phase 2 portion of the ZUMA-1 study. Adoptive transfer of engineered T cells has the potential to become standard of care for patients with refractory NHL in the near future."