23andMe to shut down its ther­a­peu­tics di­vi­sion

23andMe is clos­ing its ther­a­peu­tics di­vi­sion and will wind down on­go­ing clin­i­cal tri­als, the strug­gling ge­net­ic test­ing com­pa­ny said Mon­day evening.

The com­pa­ny said it’s ex­plor­ing all strate­gic op­tions for its ther­a­peu­tic pro­grams, in­clud­ing li­cens­ing agree­ments, as­set sales or oth­er deals. 23andMe’s ther­a­peu­tic pro­grams in­clude can­cer drugs 23ME-00610 and 23ME-01473, as well as pre­clin­i­cal im­munol­o­gy and in­flam­ma­tion pro­grams.

It’s al­so cut­ting 40% of its work­force, or more than 200 em­ploy­ees, as part of busi­ness re­struc­tur­ing ex­pect­ed to re­sult in an­nu­al­ized cost sav­ings of $35 mil­lion.

“We are tak­ing these dif­fi­cult but nec­es­sary ac­tions as we re­struc­ture 23andMe and fo­cus on the long-term suc­cess of our core con­sumer busi­ness and re­search part­ner­ships,” co-founder and CEO Anne Wo­j­ci­c­ki said in the news re­lease.

The moves are the lat­est in a string of set­backs for 23andMe, which has strug­gled might­i­ly with its dual busi­ness mod­el of sell­ing di­rect-to-con­sumer DNA test­ing kits and us­ing that da­ta to de­vel­op drugs. The com­pa­ny went pub­lic in 2021 at a val­u­a­tion of $3.5 bil­lion, but its mar­ket cap is now $111 mil­lion.

In re­cent months, Wo­j­ci­c­ki has been seek­ing to take the com­pa­ny pri­vate, but the com­pa­ny’s board mem­bers re­ject­ed her of­fer and then all of them re­signed in Sep­tem­ber, cit­ing con­cerns over their dif­fer­ing views with Wo­j­ci­c­ki. The com­pa­ny ap­point­ed three new board mem­bers late last month.

Over the sum­mer, 23andMe shut down its in­ter­nal drug dis­cov­ery group and laid off 30 em­ploy­ees.

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