Surrozen culls at least 2 research programs to funnel more money toward clinical work
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Source: FierceBiotech
Surrozen has a little over $50 million in cash and equivalents on hand more than two years after reaching Wall Street via a SPAC.
Surrozen’s fiscal tightening has continued through the year, with the biotech cutting two preclinical assets to focus on two meds already in trials.
The company disclosed Thursday that last month it “implemented a plan to further prioritize and focus resources” on SZN-043 and SZN-1326, extending its cash runway into 2025. The former is in a phase 1 trial for patients with severe alcoholic hepatitis while the latter is being developed to treat moderate to severe inflammatory bowel syndrome.
A snapshot of the company’s pipeline in May via the Internet Archive showed two preclinical assets underway to treat severe dry eye and Fuchs’ dystrophy—both have since been removed. The company did not immediately respond to a question on whether any layoffs will be instigated as a result of the pipeline trim.
The company certainly turned to layoffs back in January, when it waved goodbye to 25% of its employees to focus on key clinical and discovery programs.
The cost-cutting measures followed a voluntary pause of a phase 1 trial testing SZN-1326 in healthy volunteers disclosed in the third quarter of 2022 after elevated liver enzyme levels were identified in several subjects. The company said at the time that the patients were asymptomatic, but higher-than-normal levels of alanine transaminase and aspartate transaminase can be a sign of liver damage.
Enrollment in that trial did not restart until the second quarter of 2023. Surrozen expects to produce safety data by the end of the year before launching a phase 1b trial in patients with ulcerative colitis in 2024.
Also front of mind for the South San Francisco biotech is making good on its new collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim, announced in October 2022. Surrozen says it anticipates nominating a lead FZD-4 targeted Wnt agonist drug candidate next year, which would trigger a $10 million milestone payment. Boehringer signed off on more than $580 million in biobucks for the bispecific antibody, SZN-413, in addition to $12.5 million upfront.
Surrozen rode the great SPAC wave of 2021 to Wall Street in a $212 million deal, following two separate $50 million venture rounds. The company now reports having $53.4 million on hand as it tries to strike clinical gold with the existing pipeline.
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