April 25, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Less than 10 days after OncoMed Pharmaceuticals announced its mid-stage combination lung cancer treatment failed to meet endpoints, the company has slashed half its workforce in an effort to focus its finances on three clinical-stage programs.
OncoMed made the announcement Monday afternoon, which caused company stock to dip slightly, although it is rebounding this morning. Shares are currently trading at $3.77. Paul Hastings, OncoMed’s Chairman and chief executive officer, praised his employees and said the company will do its best to support those impacted by the layoffs, something he called a “difficult, but necessary, transition.”
On April 17, the company announced its mid-stage trial of tarextumab (anti-Notch2/3, OMP-59R5) in combination with etoposide and a chemotherapy drug to treat patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer showed results that were “undifferentiated from those of chemotherapy plus placebo.” Tarextumab (anti-Notch2/3, OMP-59R5) is a fully human monoclonal antibody that targets the Notch2 and Notch3 receptors. The drug is part of OncoMed’s collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline .
With the job cuts, OncoMed is left with 54 fulltime employees. The company said the layoffs are expected to help the company save approximately $60 million over the next two years associated with personnel and operating expenses. As a result, OncoMed said it should have sufficient cash to finance operations through the third quarter of 2019. In its announcement, OncoMed estimated one-time severance-related charges of $2.6 million related to termination benefits and other related expenses. As a result of these changes, the company also adjusted guidance for its anticipated 2017 expenses to approximately $90 million, as compared to prior estimates of approximately $100 million.
“With this restructuring, we expect to have greater than two years cash to support operations focused on driving our rosmantuzumab, navicixizumab and anti-TIGIT clinical-stage programs to $98 million in potential development milestone payments while advancing our immuno-oncology discovery-stage portfolio. We plan to also explore partnering opportunities for our Wnt pathway and immuno-oncology agents to which we have worldwide rights,” Hastings said in a statement.
OncoMed said it is planning two Phase Ib clinical trials of navicixizumab and a Phase Ia trial of anti-TIGIT (OMP-313M32. Both drugs are being developed in collaboration with Celgene .
The company said it is also planning on filing an Investigational New Drug Application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the first half of this year for its GITRL-Fc trimer (OMP-336B11).
OncoMed will also seek to maximize the value from potential interest in partnering the assets to which it has worldwide rights, such as vantictumab, ipafricept, GITRL-Fc trimer and undisclosed immuno-oncology discoveries. However, earlier this month, prior to the mid-stage failure, OncoMed announced its partnership with Bayer to develop vantictumab and ipafricept, both Wnt pathway inhibitors, had ended due to “strategic reasons.”
Also in April, the company announced it was terminating a Phase II trial testing demcizumab in combination with Abraxane as a first-line treatment in metastic pancreatic cancer after the drug failed to meet endpoints.
