KaloBios, a once-promising monoclonal antibody player, just announced it is winding down operations.
The San Francisco company, which laid off 17 employees – about 61 percent of its workforce – just last week, was exploring “strategic alternatives for the company.” This effort clearly did not succeed – and thanks to the company’s “limited cash resources,” it’ll shutter operations, CFO and interim CEO Herb Cross said in a statement. It did, however, pay back a $6.6 million outstanding debt to MidCap Financial.
Kalobios was launched in 2000 and was quickly lauded as an up-and-coming developer of monoclonal antibody therapies. It has been funded with equity rounds and deals from Novartis and Sanofi. The beleaguered biotech began trading on the Nasdaq in February 2013, hitting the market at $60 per share.
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Stock has progressively crashed, with a series of notable setbacks – such as Sanofi walking away from its antibacterial program in the midst of a Phase 2 study, even after a $35 million investment in the company. Sanofi never said what caused it to back away from KaloBios.
In its 15-year lifespan, KaloBios never had a product approval or revenues from its programs, it said in its most recent quarterly report. Indeed, as of June 30, 2015 it had $193.9 million in debt. CEO David Pritchard suddenly retired this past January.
KalosBios will shut down the two programs it has under development: A Phase 2 drug called KB004 being studied for certain hematologic malignancies, and lenzilumab, or KB003, which was being developed for chronic myelomonocytic leukemia and was slated to enter Phase 1 trials later this year. An IND had just been approved for KB003 just this past July.
[Image from Flickr marsmet526]
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