 In the same month, Kite Pharma announced that it has entered into a worldwide research and license agreement with Alpine Immune Sciences (AIS), a privately held biotechnology startup, to discover and develop protein-based immunotherapies targeting the immune synapse to treat cancer.AIS will grant Kite an exclusive license to two programs from its transmembrane immunomodulatory protein (TIP) technology, which Kite plans to further engineer into chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) and T cell receptor (TCR) product candidates.This collaboration will accelerate Kite's efforts to establish the next generation of engineered T cell therapies specifically designed to overcome the inhibitory mechanisms present in the tumor microenvironment.