April 6, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Shares of Bind Therapeutics were down more than 28 percent this morning after the company announced a workforce reduction of 38 percent as part of an effort to conserve cash to support ongoing research. Once the layoffs are complete, Bind Therapeutics will be left with 61 employees, the company said this morning. The layoffs are coming at a time the company undergoes a new research and development strategy and looks for larger companies to partner with for development of its cancer drugs, particularly its lead product BIND-014, a nanoparticle therapeutic that targets a prostate-specific membrane antigen. The restructuring is expected to streamline the company and reduce operating expenses, Andrew Hirsch, president and chief executive officer of Bind Therapeutics, said in a statement.
“This workforce reduction is a necessary action to bring our operating costs to a more sustainable level, allowing the ongoing development of our pipeline of innovative therapeutic candidates that address challenges small molecule chemistry or antibody engineering have not been able to overcome,” Hirsch said.
In addition to the workforce reduction initiatives, Bind Therapeutics is working with an investment bank to initiate a review of financial and strategic alternatives with the goal of maximizing stockholder value, the company said. Bind also said it will evaluate options regarding the company’s wholly owned subsidiary in Moscow.
Collectively, these actions are expected to bring BIND’s quarterly cash burn rate to approximately $6 million per quarter by the third quarter of 2016, the company said.
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.
“While the single-arm design of these trials precludes definitive conclusions, we remain especially intrigued by the iNSITE 1 data in squamous histology non-small cell lung cancer patients,” Hagop Youssoufian, Bind’s chief medical officer, said in a statement.
Bind Therapeutics is no stranger to collaborations with larger companies. Bind currently has one kinase inhibitor Accurin, AZD2811, in phase 1 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 optimization of lead product candidates and completion of preclinical studies, BIND anticipates initiation of clinical testing for one or more proprietary innovative product candidates as early as 2018, the company said.
