Penn spinout Interius BioTherapeutics is being sold to Kite Pharma for $350 million
Interius is working on a more efficient way to deliver CAR-T therapy to patients.
A University of Pennsylvania spinout that is developing a faster and cheaper way to modify immune cells to fight cancer will be sold to a unit of Gilead Sciences Inc. for $350 million under an agreement announced Thursday.
Privately-held Interius BioTherapeutics Inc., cofounded by Penn researcher Saar Gill and based at Pennovation Works in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia, has a technology designed to create CAR-T cells inside the patient’s body.
Currently, these therapies require reengineering a patient’s cells outside the body and injecting them back into the patient, a process that can take weeks. Interius’ method could make treatments for certain forms of cancer and autoimmune diseases more widely available.
Interius announced last fall that it had dosed its first patient with the instructions to build their own cancer-fighting immune cells. The Interius process is referred to as in vivo therapy. Interius’ first therapy is designed to fight B-cell malignancies.
“In vivo therapy is a promising frontier with the potential to transform how we approach treating patients, shifting to more accessible and scalable solutions,” said Cindy Perettie, executive vice president of Kite Pharma, the Gilead unit that Interius will join.
The announcement from Gilead and Interius said that Philadelphia will become a “center of excellence” for Kite. Interius employs 50 at Pennovation Works. Gilead is based in California.
In 2023, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based Kite acquired Tmunity Therapeutics, a Philadelphia company cofounded by Penn’s CAR-T pioneer Carl June. Last year, Kite announced plans to close Tmunity’s remaining operations here, laying off 14 people.
Interius has raised $170 million from investors, which means that Gilead is paying more than twice the amount of investment Interius received since its founding in 2019. Penn is among the investors.
Another privately-held Penn spinout, Capstan Therapeutics, is being sold to pharmaceutical giant AbbVie for $2.1 billion. Capstan is headquartered in San Diego.
Gill’s cofounder of Interius is Bruce Peacock, a veteran biotech entrepreneur in the Philadelphia region. Peacock’s experience in the industry stretches back to early Philadelphia-area biotech firms Centocor Inc. (sold to Johnson & Johnson in 1999) and Cephalon Inc. (sold to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Inc. in 2011).