Catamaran Bio sends out life raft in tough financing climate, ending day-to-day operations
30 Jan 2024
Cell TherapyImmunotherapy
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Source: FierceBiotech
Catamaran Bio had about 19 employees prior to the closure, and “the vast majority” will be let go at this time.
Catamaran Bio’s voyage is ending early, as the cell therapy biotech winds down operations and tries to find a new partner for its allogeneic solid tumor therapies.
CEO Alvin Shih confirmed the decision to suspend day-to-day operations, which was communicated in a LinkedIn post Monday afternoon. In a statement provided to Fierce Biotech, Shih said the decision stems from the general funding environment in the biotech industry that has taken down many companies over the past year.
“We still believe strongly in the potential of allogeneic therapies to address unmet needs in solid tumor indications, and our work to develop the Tailwind platform has been highly productive. However, the financing environment for early-stage companies like ours in the cell therapy space continues to be challenging, and the time and resources required to achieve a meaningful clinical readout made it impossible for us to proceed on our intended path,” Shih said in his post.
Catamaran had about 19 employees prior to the closure, and “the vast majority” will be let go at this time, Shih said in an email. Shih and a handful of other executives will stay on to oversee the search for a new strategic partner that can take on the Tailwind programs and other technology held by Catamaran.
Catamaran’s leadership is open to what the future corporate structure will look like and the type of strategic partnership that ends up taking over the work, the CEO added.
In the post, Shih offered up his contact details to anyone interested in considering Catamaran’s technology and programs: “We are seeking strategic partners for these programs as well as the underlying technology platform which enables the engineering of cell therapies to overcome the tumor microenvironment.”
The Tailwind platform engineers and manufactures natural killer cells into off-the-shelf cell therapy products for solid tumors. The technology aims to overcome the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment using synthetic biology and non-viral cell engineering to program the natural killer cells, creating chimeric antigen receptor-NK cells that can be used to fight cancer.
The platform has so far turned out two preclinical programs: CAT-248 for CD70-positive tumorsCD70-positive tumors and CAT-179 for HER2-positive solid tumors. Shih said in his post that both are nearing investigational new drug-enabling studies, the step before human testing. The company believes the therapies “will be meaningfully differentiated from other approaches,” according to Shih’s post.
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