In December 2024, Dewpoint Therapeutics CEO Ameet Nathwani said the biotech’s cash runway would last until the third quarter of 2025.
Boston and Germany–based startup Dewpoint Therapeutics is letting go of 70% of its workforce as its cash reserves dwindle, according to reporting on Tuesday from STAT News.
Citing an anonymous source, STAT noted that after the layoffs, Dewpoint’s operations will be focused on its site in Boston. In a statement to Endpoints News, CEO Ameet Nathwani confirmed that the biotech has “undertaken a strategic consolidation” of its business, but declined to provide details regarding the scope of this initiative.
Because Dewpoint is a private company it is not required to file quarterly or annual reports with the Securities Exchange Commission, giving outsiders limited visibility into its staffing and cash reserves. However, in a December 2024 interview with Endpoints, Nathwani revealed that the biotech had 91 employees, suggesting that some 63 people could be losing their jobs.
At the time of that statement, Nathwani also revealed that Dewpoint’s runway would only keep the lights on into the third quarter of 2025, and that the biotech would be looking for some series D funding at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference last January. No such round materialized. Dewpoint’s most recent financing push was in February 2022, bringing in $150 million in series C proceeds.
On Thursday, Nathwani told Endpoints that Dewpoint is “in the final stages of securing a private financing round.”
Dewpoint’s platform leverages biomolecular condensates—membrane-less organelles that form spontaneously across the cell and which are linked to cellular organization. According to Dewpoint, dysregulated condensates could give rise to diseases and, therefore, be used as therapeutic targets. This approach has garnered interest from the industry and patient groups. In August 2024, the company won an in-kind grant from the Target ALS Foundation to validate one of its candidates in a mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
In October that same year, Bayer inked a licensing deal with Dewpoint for a disease-modifying candidate for dilated cardiomyopathy. The agreement was worth $424 million, including upfront and milestone payments. Mitsubishi Tanabe likewise bet $480 million in upfront and milestone commitments in December 2024 for Dewpoint’s small-molecule condensate modulator for ALS.
In January, Dewpoint announced it would advance DPTX3496, an oral small-molecule condensate modulator, for colorectal cancer, triple-negative breast cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. An Investigational New Drug application is planned for the second half of 2025.
