Trou­bled In­fin­i­ty ax­es 100 staffers, shut­ters tri­als and re­wards top ex­ecs af­ter Ab­b­Vie walks away from deal

Back in the fall of 2014, a rest­less Ab­b­Vie stepped in with a $275 mil­lion up­front pay­ment to part­ner with In­fin­i­ty Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals on du­velis­ib, its oral PI3k-delta/gam­ma in­hibitor for blood can­cers. To­day, af­ter du­velis­ib failed to im­press the phar­ma com­pa­ny in a mid-stage study, Ab­b­Vie is walk­ing away from their part­ner­ship and In­fin­i­ty is ax­ing 100 staffers to con­serve cash.

In­fin­i­ty’s trou­bles hit af­ter du­velis­ib hit its pri­ma­ry end­point for in­do­lent non-Hodgkin lym­phoma in a Phase II with a 46% over­all re­sponse rate. Zy­delig and Rit­ux­an both did bet­ter than that, though, spurring some big ques­tions over what kind of fu­ture the drug could have on the mar­ket.

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