Israel’s Kite Pharma Sold For $12B

August 28, 2017 | American pharma giant Gilead has agreed to buy Israel’s Kite Pharma for a whopping $11.9 billion, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The Israeli cancer-treatment company today confirmed the report. Kite Pharma, which specializes in developing therapies that use the patient’s immune system to treat cancer, was founded in 2009 by Joshua A. Kazam and Dr. Arie Belldegrun, an Israeli-American oncologist. It went public in 2014 (NASDAQ:KITE). Some of the company’s developments are based on research conducted at Israel’s Weizmann Institute.