Uni­ty Biotech­nol­o­gy’s lead an­ti-ag­ing pro­gram faced the chop­ping block last month fol­low­ing a ma­jor Phase II flop. And now, 30% of its staff are next, as the com­pa­ny re­struc­tures to fo­cus on oph­thal­mol­o­gy and neu­rol­o­gy.

The staff re­duc­tion will leave San Fran­cis­co-based Uni­ty $UBX with 75 full-time em­ploy­ees by the end of the year. It’s yet an­oth­er blow to the celebri­ty-fund­ed biotech, which has been laser-fo­cused on clear­ing senes­cent cells to po­ten­tial­ly re­duce the symp­toms of ag­ing.

In the last 10 years, Uni­ty has at­tract­ed in­vestors like Jeff Be­zos, Pe­ter Thiel and Arch Ven­ture Part­ners’ Bob Nelsen — rak­ing in more than $200 mil­lion in fund­ing. But last month, it missed the mark in a 183-per­son Phase II study test­ing UBX0101 for os­teoarthri­tis of the knee. Pa­tients on the treat­ment arms showed vir­tu­al­ly no dif­fer­ence com­pared to pa­tients on the place­bo arm, and as a re­sult of the news, the biotech’s mar­ket val­ue plunged 60%.

De­spite the set­back, CEO Anir­van Ghosh re­mained con­fi­dent in Uni­ty’s pre­clin­i­cal pipeline. “Our con­fi­dence in senes­cent cells dri­ving dis­ease bi­ol­o­gy re­mains strong,” he told in­vestors last month. “Not on­ly be­cause of work we’ve done in­ter­nal­ly, but al­so be­cause of the wealth of da­ta from labs that con­tin­ue to in­di­cate both that senes­cent cells ac­cu­mu­late dur­ing dis­eases of ag­ing and that elim­i­nat­ing them with tar­get­ed mech­a­nisms can pro­vide ben­e­fit.”

The biotech is hop­ing to send its di­a­bet­ic mac­u­lar ede­ma can­di­date, UBX1325, in­to Phase I by the end of the year. It’s de­signed to tar­get Bcl-xL, thus elim­i­nat­ing senes­cent cells to po­ten­tial­ly treat age-re­lat­ed eye dis­eases. Plus, the biotech is keep­ing UBX1967 in its pock­et — a “mol­e­c­u­lar­ly dis­tinct back­up to UBX1325.”

If all goes ac­cord­ing to plan, Uni­ty ex­pects to dose the first pa­tients in a Phase I study of UBX1325 lat­er this year.

“Uni­ty is a pi­o­neer in the de­vel­op­ment of ther­a­peu­tics tar­get­ing senes­cent cells at the crux of many age-re­lat­ed dis­eases, and we will con­tin­ue to build on this sci­en­tif­ic foun­da­tion as we ad­vance our pipeline,” Ghosh said in a state­ment.

The com­pa­ny says the staff re­duc­tion will ex­tend its cash run­way through mid-2022, and it’s go­ing to keep push­ing its pipeline to­ward the clin­ic.

“Mov­ing for­ward we will have a lean­er and more ag­ile team, which is well-re­sourced to ad­vance our pipeline pro­grams to key mile­stones,” Ghosh added lat­er.

Belgian biotech Confo Therapeutics has landed $183 million, plus potential royalties, in a drug-discovery deal with Daiichi Sankyo.

Early Thursday, Confo Therapeutics put out word of the deal that will be focused on small molecule antagonists to go after an undisclosed target that the company says is associated with CNS diseases.

Confo CEO Cedric Ververken told Endpoints News that Daiichi originally reached out to learn about the biotech’s technology. He added that Confo, founded in 2015, will use its platform to drug a GPCR target that Daiichi has struggled with internally.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Boehringer Ingelheim reported human pharma sales of €18.5 billion on Wednesday, led by type 2 diabetes and heart failure drug Jardiance and pulmonary fibrosis med Ofev. Jardiance sales reached €5.8 billion, growing 39% year over year, while Ofev took in €3.2 billion, notching its own 20.6% annual jump.

However, Boehringer is also looking ahead with its pipeline, estimating “In the next seven years the company expects about 20 regulatory approvals in human pharma.”

Microcap biotech Seelos Therapeutics is halting enrollment of its study in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (also known as Machado-Joseph disease) because of “financial considerations,” and in order to focus on other studies, the company said today, adding that the pause would be temporary.

The study will continue with the patients who have already enrolled, and the data from them will be used to decide whether to continue enrolling others in the future.