Aside from the layoffs, InflaRx will deprioritize Gohibic, a COVID-19 antibody that was granted emergency use authorization in 2023. The therapy failed a late-stage trial in a rare skin disease last year.
InflaRx is cutting approximately 30% of its employees in a bid to streamline its spending and pour more of its resources into its immunology headliner izicopan.
To accompany the layoffs, InflaRx will also pull money from its investigational antibody Gohibic, according to a press announcement on Thursday. Gohibic was authorized for the treatment of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients under the FDA’s emergency use pathway. In March last year, InflaRx pulled the plug on a late-stage study of Gohibic in pyoderma gangrenosum, a rare skin disease, after the asset disappointed in a late-stage study.
At the time, the company said it was “considering additional cost savings and redirection of resources”—a forewarning of Thursday’s strategic initiative.
The restructuring effort will mean around $7 million in one-time costs for InflaRx, the German biotech said in its announcement, most of which will be non-cash charges related to writing off its Gohibic inventory.
With these changes in its operations, however, InflaRx expects its runway to now push into mid-2027. It also anticipates having some breathing room to advance izicopan, an investigational inhibitor of the C5a pathway. Izicopan is in mid-stage development for chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) and hidradenitis suppurativa (HS), and in Phase I for other immune skin conditions.
Currently, InflaRx is in talks with the FDA over its Phase IIb trial for izicopan, looking to align on relevant endpoints to test to “meaningfully differentiate izicopan from existing therapies” available for HS. The biotech is also looking to smooth over “variability inherent in some HS trial outcomes,” according to its statement Thursday.
“InflaRx is moving as quickly as is feasible in this effort,” the company said, though it has not provided a more definitive timeline for when it expects to complete the regulatory discussions. The biotech plans to present Phase IIa HS and CSU data for izicopan at medical conferences later this year.
Administered orally, izicopan is a small-molecule blocker of a certain subtype of the C5a receptor, a mode of action that InflaRx said has “shown anti-inflammatory therapeutic effects” in pre-clinical models. InflaRx “sees significant potential for izicopan to address unmet needs in multiple [immunology and inflammatory] indications,” according to Thursday’s release.
