Seattle-based VLST is laying off about two-thirds of its staff as it seeks to save cash for clinical trials of a cancer drug candidate it licensed from Pfizer, Xconomy has learned. The biotech company will be downsizing from 17 employees to five at the end of this year, CEO Martin Simonetti says. VLST is eliminating its biological target discovery group at the end of this year, once it fulfills the last obligations to one of its partners, Belgium-based UCB. The job cuts were made so that VLST can concentrate its resources into clinical trials of an experimental cancer drug it obtained last month from Pfizer, Simonetti says. VLST plans to hire a couple more people next year with development expertise to help move that drug candidate forward, he adds.
