Gilead, Kite shorten Yescarta manufacturing by two days in ‘incremental’ improvement

Gilead and Kite an­nounced Tues­day it re­ceived FDA ap­proval to short­en its man­u­fac­tur­ing process for the cell ther­a­py Yescar­ta, a move ex­pect­ed to re­duce the time pa­tients need to wait for the treat­ment by two days.

The short­en­ing, mea­sured by what’s known as “me­di­an turn­around time (TAT),” will fall from 16 days to 14 days, Gilead es­ti­mates. David Porter, the di­rec­tor of cell ther­a­py and trans­plants at Penn Med­i­cine, told End­points News any im­prove­ment in me­di­an TAT is good, but Tues­day’s up­date rep­re­sents one that is “in­cre­men­tal.”

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