Argos Cuts Staff by 38% After Devastating Phase III News
March 10, 2017
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Durham, NC-based Argos Therapeutics filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it plans to cut its workforce by 38 percent. The cuts will take the company from 122 staffers to 76.
“The principal objective of the reduction is to enable the company to conserve its financial resources as the company conducts its ongoing review of the preliminary ADAPT trial data set and discusses the data with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, following which the company will make a determination as to the next steps for the rocapuldencel-T clinical program,” the company stated in its filing.
On February 22, Argos announced that the Independent Data Monitoring Committee (IDMC) for its Phase III ADAPT clinical trial of rocapuldencel-T in combination with sunitinib/standard-of-care for metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) recommended they discontinue the study. Based on an interim data analysis, they did not feel it was likely to show a statistically significant improvement in overall survival in the combination treatment arm.
In addition to the staff cuts, Joan Winterbottom, the company’s vice president and chief human resources officer will leave the company. The cuts are expected to decrease annual operating costs by $5.7 million, while incurring a one-time layoff costs of $1.3 million.
It would appear that the results of the Phase III trial caught the company off guard. In January, it signed a lease for 40,000 square feet of manufacturing space at the Center for Technology & Innovation on the Centennial Campus of North Carolina State University. It planned to use the facility to submit a biologics license application to the FDA and support initial marketing of rocapuldencel-T. In a deal with the state, it promised to invest $10 million and create 70 new jobs over the next several years.
On December 14, 2016, the company entered into a strategic research deal with Personalis, Inc. Personalis was to act as the primary genomic analysis service provider in support of Argos’ rocapuldencel-T. Argos was to use the Personalis ACE ImmunoID next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform to evaluate tumor samples that were gathered during clinical development of Argos’ tumor-specific dendritic cell technology to treat renal cell carcinoma. It is not clear at this point if the news of the trial failure will affect this deal.
In a statement at the time, Charles Nicolette, Argos’ chief scientific officer and vice president of research and development, said, “The Personalis technology is a key component to our efforts to further understand the mechanism of action of our lead product, rocapuldencel-T for the treatment of advanced renal cell cancer. We hope to demonstrate that rocapuldencel-T specifically targets neoantigens found only in the patients’ tumors to explain why we observe tumor regression without autoimmunity to the unaffected contralateral kidney.”
The Herald Sun notes that Argos cut its workforce in April 2016 by 13 percent, taking staffing from 135 to 117 employees.
Argos dropped off considerably at the news. Shares traded for $4.70 on February 17. They are currently trading for $1.18. The shares had a yearly high of $12.44 on April 18, 2016, before dropping to $4.98 on May 4, 2016.