IN8bio is putting its brain tumor development program on the back burner and axing almost half of its employees in an effort to cut costs and divert resources to an early-phase blood cancer asset.
The New York-based biotech is hitting pause on its 120-patient Phase 2 trial of INB-400 for recurrent or newly diagnosed glioblastoma, which just dosed its first patient in April. IN8bio will stop further recruitment into the study as it searches for “partnership opportunities,” according to a company release Wednesday.
As for the Phase 1 trial of INB-200 in newly diagnosed glioblastoma, which has enrolled 21 patients, the company will keep tracking long-term remissions and overall survival.
William HoIN8bio will continue monitoring all patients across both studies. The “difficult decision” will allow the company to “reduce our spend and focus on key milestones that can help to generate near-term interest and value creation,” CEO William Ho said in the release.
As for IN8bio’s layoffs, it is cutting around 49% of its staffers across all functions. The drugmaker had 39 full-time employees at the end of June, according to an SEC filing from last month. The workforce reduction is expected to cost IN8bio less than half a million dollars.
The company ended June with just $10.2 million in cash, according to its latest earnings release. It is cutting executives’ pay by 11%, according to a Wednesday SEC filing.
IN8bio says these cuts mean that it would have fuel for its allogeneic gamma delta T cell therapy program for acute myeloid leukemia. The candidate, dubbed INB-100, is being tested in a University of Kansas-sponsored Phase 1 dose-escalation trial in the post-transplant maintenance setting.
As of last month, all eight AML patients in the Phase 1 given INB-100 were relapse-free at a median follow-up of 18.7 months. But certain patients in the 38-subject study with other forms of leukemia who relapsed have since died of disease progression.
Following a meeting with the FDA, the company plans to add a control group to the study and continue enrolling into the expansion cohort with a target of 25 additional AML patients. It expects to have long-term follow-up results ready late next year and in 2026.