Caribou Biosciences is cutting its CAR-NK research and laying off 21 employees, or 12% of its staff, the company announced Tuesday.
“We are undertaking this reduction to extend our cash runway by approximately 6 months and to focus our resources on our allogeneic CAR-T cell therapy platform and four clinical-stage programs,” Caribou said in an emailed statement to Endpoints News.
Caribou said it expects to “substantially complete” the layoffs by the end of September, after which it will have about 145 employees. The changes were initially disclosed in an SEC filing.
The biotech instead will focus resources on its off-the-shelf, or allogeneic, CAR-T cell therapy. It’s running a trial of the treatment in B cell lymphoma, and in April announced plans to study the therapy in autoimmune disease. In June, Caribou shared data from its B cell lymphoma CAR-T cell therapy trial, suggesting that partial HLA matching could boost durability of the therapy.
It also has early-stage studies of allogeneic CAR-T cell therapies in multiple myeloma and acute myeloid leukemia.
Current CAR-T cell therapies require a patient’s own cells, which represent a major obstacle to making and delivering the therapy. Caribou, which was co-founded by Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna, uses gene editing to engineer cell therapies from donor cells, with the hope they can be administered “off-the-shelf.” An allogeneic CAR-NK cell therapy, which uses special immune cells called natural killer cells, would have likewise been developed from donor cells.
The company has lost 52% of its value year-to-date, with its shares $CRBU closing Tuesday at about $2.73 apiece. The share price was down almost 2% in post-market trading following Tuesday’s announcement.
Caribou and other CAR-NK biotechs have faced a number of recent challenges. Last year, Caribou received a $25 million investment from Pfizer, then a few months later lost a collaboration with AbbVie. Artiva Biotherapeutics, which seeks to go public later this week, lost its large collaboration with Merck last fall. Meanwhile, off-the-shelf CAR-NK biotech Catamaran Bio shuttered earlier this year.
In the broader NK cell therapy space, BeiGene ditched a pact with Shoreline Biosciences in February. And Artiva partner Affimed laid off workers last year.