Kite-Gilead Cell Therapy Innovation Program
Kite-Gilead is a global life sciences company committed to bringing the promise of cell therapy to as many eligible patients as possible who may benefit.
The Kite-Gilead Cell Therapy Innovation Program is designed to support Stanford investigator collaborations to accelerate innovative, early stage cell therapy research. With this program, Kite-Gilead aims to support novel preclinical and translational research.
Award winning proposals will receive:
- Up to $200,000 of direct research funding plus institutional overhead for up to 18 months.
- Kite-Gilead R&D expertise and guidance.
Program Goals:
Kite-Gilead’s primary objective in developing this Innovation program is to convert promising projects to clinical sponsored research programs and subsequently create in-licensing and start-up opportunities with the potential to continuously expand and augment Kite-Gilead’s early stage portfolio.
Stanford faculty with PI eligibility and CE faculty (with an approved CE faculty PI waiver). CE applicants must obtain an approved CE faculty PI waiver BEFORE the pre-proposal deadline. Stanford instructors, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff are not eligible to apply.
Instructions for CE faculty PI waiver requests: Submit the required, completed CE faculty PI waiver template and attachments directly to Kathleen Thompson at klt@stanford.edu before Noon (Pacific Time) on January 24, 2025. Please do not contact your RPM/RMG or CGO/OSR regarding waivers for this program.
Areas of Interest:
This program will focus on research projects that aim to discover new and actionable knowledge about:
- Therapeutic targets, T cell activation pathways and mechanisms to avoid CAR T cell exhaustion;
- Innovative methods to increase patient CAR T cell safety and efficacy;
- Correlative analysis of samples to improve cell therapy patient outcomes; and
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Exploration of non-cancer cell therapy indications.
Please see the PDF attachment "Call for Proposals" for specific examples of areas of interest across Oncology, Rheumatology and Immunology.
Timeline for Pre-Proposals:
- January 24, 2025 (11:59 PM Pacific time) - CE faculty PI Waiver requests due, if applicable
- January 31, 2025 (11:59 PM Pacific time) - Internal deadline to submit pre-proposals to Stanford Medicine Industry Relations (SM-IR)
- March 3, 2025 - Notification for which pre-proposals have been selected for detailed proposals
Selected pre-proposals will need to be developed further into full, detailed proposals and reviewed for final selection by the Kite-Stanford Joint Steering Committee. Anticipated start of selected projects is June 1, 2025.
Submission Instructions for Pre-proposals:
Fill out the attached pre-proposal template. Email the complete pre-proposal to kiteprogram@stanford.edu before January 31, 2025 11:59pm. The Industry Relations team will review the submissions with the Office Technological Licensing (OTL) and Industry Contracting Office (ICO) and then formally submit all pre-proposals to Kite on behalf of Stanford. See attached instructions for more information.
There should be NO confidential information disclosed in the pre-proposals.
Institutional representative: you do not need to submit your pre-proposals through RMG or OSR for institutional approval; you may submit your pre-proposal directly to the program per the instructions above. If invited to submit a full proposal, please initiate your Proposal Intake Form (PIF) at your earliest convenience. Final full proposal submissions will require institutional approval prior to submission.
Questions? Please contact the program team at kiteprogram@stanford.edu.
Stanford Resources
Funding Information for the Stanford community: Limited submission programs, NIH resources, DoD CDMRP, internal funding opportunities, searchable funding databases.
Institutional representatives and Internal Proposal Deadline Policy
School of Medicine PIs: RPM Department Assignments and SoM internal proposal deadline policy. A Proposal Intake Form (PIF) in SeRA is required for all sponsored project proposal submissions in the School of Medicine (except for fellowships, clinical trials, and Internal Seed Funding NOT from sponsored projects).
PIs in all Other Schools: Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) Contract and Grant Officer Pre-Award & Post-award department assignments.
The $200,000 budget is for direct research funding. Indirect costs should be calculated for the total budget. Kite will rely on what the faculty, in collaboration with RMG, estimate as appropriate; however, details on budget would not be explored unless a pre-proposal is selected for a full proposal submission.
