Prothena guts workforce by more than half, after trial failure
pharmafile | May 25, 2018 | News story | Medical Communications | Neil Woodford, Prothena, Roche, biotech, drugs, pharma, pharmaceutical
Prothena Therapeutics has acted drastically by slashing staff numbers by more than half, after the failure of two pivotal trials for its lead candidate.
The company subsequently ditched NEOD001, when trials revealed that placebo treatment outperformed the drug candidate in the treatment of AL amyloidosis.
The reorganisation sees 63 positions cut away from the Dublin-based company, representing a shedding of 57% of the entire staff at the company.
As is usually the case, the process was necessitated to stymie cash losses during 2018 – it projected its estimated net cash burn for the year to be $40 million to $50 million, driven by a net loss of $170 million to $185 million.
Luckily for the biotech, it’s had some backers that were betting that its work would produce results and so estimates that it still have a relatively healthy $421 million in cash to end the year on.
One notable backer is renowned UK investor, Neil Woodford, who had to defend his investment in biotech in a blog post immediately after the trial failures were announced – pointing out strengths from within the Prothena’s pipeline and suggesting its partnership with Roche was one reason to keep faith with the biotech.
In the announcement regarding its restructuring, Prothena followed suit, with Gene Kinney, President and Chief Executive Officer of Prothena, saying: “As we move forward, we have the resources to support the advancement of our pipeline through meaningful milestones and we will focus on developing neuroscience programs that we believe have a potential to offer significant benefit to patients. This includes our two clinical-stage programs PRX002/RG7935, currently in Phase 2 development in the PASADENA study in patients with early Parkinson’s disease, and PRX004, which recently initiated a Phase 1 study in patients with ATTR amyloidosis.”
PRX002/RG7935 is both being developed in collaboration with Roche and there will be significant hopes placed on this candidate to pull the biotech out of a tricky spot; however, with the treatment being for patients with Parkinson’s disease, it’s a fairly risky bet given the dearth of disease-modifying treatments for the condition.
Ben Hargreaves
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