Cambridge's BIND Therapeutics Files for Chapter 11 and Reviews Strategic Alternatives

May 2, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Shares of Bind Therapeutics are down more than 64 percent this morning after BIND filed Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, the company announced this morning.

Shares of BIND are trading at 51 cents per share, down from its Friday close of $1.42 per share. The bankruptcy announcement comes only weeks after BIND Therapeutics, Inc. slashed nearly 40 percent of its workforce as part of an effort to conserve cash to support ongoing research.

Andrew Hirsch, president and chief executive officer of BIND Therapeutics, said the decision is in the best interests of the company and its shareholders. Protections offered by Chapter 11 will allow the company to pursue “strategic and financial alternatives that are in process,” Hirsch said.

The filing minimizes the impact from the recent demand by our lender, Hercules Technology III, L.P., for accelerated repayment of our outstanding loan. Our current cash and assets exceed the loan amount, and we are current on our regularly scheduled repayment obligations. Through this process, we expect to be able to maintain ongoing financing activities and collaborator obligations while moving our R&D initiatives and pipeline forward,” Hirsch said in a statement.

While in Chapter 11, the company will continue to operate its business under jurisdiction of the Bankruptcy Court. BIND said it plans to continue its development and collaboration activities in accordance with its current innovative medicines strategy throughout the bankruptcy process. In its statement, BIND said the company is working with an investment bank to review financial and strategic alternatives with the goal of maximizing stockholder value. Additionally, BIND said it was looking at potential alternatives including raising additional capital or seeking a strategic collaboration with another company. The bankruptcy filing and the layoffs follows on the heels of an announcement in April that BIND was undergoing a shift in its research and development of its cancer drugs. BIND said it could also look at licensing or selling some or all of its proprietary technologies, which would include its lead product, BIND-014, a nanoparticle therapeutic that targets a prostate-specific membrane antigen.

BIND is no stranger to collaborative efforts with other pharma companies. Bind currently has one kinase inhibitor Accurin, AZD2811, in phase I clinical trials in collaboration with AstraZeneca . A second kinase inhibitor Accurin is currently in investigational new drug-enabling activities through a collaboration with Pfizer . Following the announcement of the workforce reduction, BIND entered into a collaborative agreement with Japan-based PeptiDream Inc. to identify macrocyclic peptides that can be utilized as biologically active targeting ligands with BIND’s proprietary Accurin nanoparticles.

Bind said its R&D shift is aimed at developing the company’s programmable therapeutics, which it calls Accurins. The company announced Phase II results of Bind-014 used in the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) of squamous histology, demonstrated a six-week disease control rate of 70 percent of patient population. Based on those results, the company said it intends to seek licensing or collaboration agreements from larger companies to further develop the drug candidate in NSCLC. While it seeks to advance that trial, Bind said it will halt research in Bind-014 for the treatment of head and neck cancer. Mid-stage trial results showed Bind-014 demonstrated a response rate of 10 percent in the head and neck cancer cohort.