Bothell-based BioLife Solutions, Inc. announced today, July 11 that it has entered into a ten year supply agreement with Kite Pharma, a leading developer of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and T cell receptor (TCR) products for various cancers.

“We are honored that Kite has adopted CryoStor in their production process for truly remarkable and potentially life-saving cellular therapies,” said BioLife President and CEO Mike Rice. “We are committed to supporting Kite with great customer service and high quality products and look forward to the interim data readout from Kite’s first clinical trial later this year.”

BioLife is a developer, manufacturer and marketer of proprietary clinical grade cell and tissue hypothermic storage and cryopreservation freeze media and a related cloud hosted biologistics cold chain management app for smart shippers.

The agreement provides for Kite’s supply of BioLife’s CryoStor clinical grade freeze media for cells and tissues, which is embedded in Kite’s manufacturing process for KTE-C19, a CAR T cell therapy currently in four clinical trials for various cancers.

“Over the last several years we have worked to qualify and adopt CryoStor in our clinical manufacturing process. We are now securing long term supply continuity for this reagent as our cell therapy product candidate continues to progress through multiple clinical trials,” said Marc Better, Vice President, Product Sciences at Kite Pharma.