Just over a year af­ter the Supreme Court quashed any hopes Acor­da had of pro­tect­ing its once-lu­cra­tive mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis drug Ampyra from cheap­er knock­offs, the New York biotech con­tin­ues to bleed cash. Now, as part of its third re­struc­tur­ing since 2017, the drug­mak­er is of­fload­ing one of its key as­sets.

As part of a sweep­ing over­haul Acor­da will sell its man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions for In­bri­ja — an in­haled pow­der for­mu­la­tion of lev­odopa — to Catal­ent for $70 mil­lion in up­front cash that will save Acor­da an ad­di­tion­al $10 mil­lion.

Catal­ent will ab­sorb all Acor­da em­ploy­ees who work at the Chelsea, MA fa­cil­i­ty, but that’s not the case for much of the com­pa­ny’s re­main­ing work­force. CEO Ron Co­hen an­nounced that be­tween the Ard­s­ley, NY head­quar­ters and its Waltham, MA fa­cil­i­ty, Acor­da would lay off rough­ly 16% of its work­force.

Co­hen por­trayed the re­struc­tur­ing, which is es­ti­mat­ed to re­duce op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es by $40 mil­lion, as “dif­fi­cult” but need­ed, and a way to bol­ster Acor­da’s bal­ance sheet and en­sure that the sup­ply of In­bri­ja was not in­ter­rupt­ed.

“The re­struc­tur­ing is nec­es­sary for Acor­da to have an in­fra­struc­ture and ex­pens­es that are right-sized for our prod­ucts and rev­enue,” Co­hen said. “This is a dif­fi­cult step for us all, not least for those who will no longer be em­ployed at the com­pa­ny.”

The sale of the man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions is ex­pect­ed to close in the first quar­ter, the com­pa­ny said in a press re­lease.

Acor­da on Wednes­day al­so an­nounced it had en­tered in­to a $15.25 mil­lion at-the-mar­ket of­fer­ing, which comes less than two weeks af­ter a re­verse 1-for-6 stock split. That split re­duced the com­pa­ny’s to­tal stock shares from 371 mil­lion to 61.6 mil­lion af­ter the stock price had fall­en be­low the re­quired $1 per share price to con­tin­ue trad­ing on the Nas­daq.

The com­pa­ny last re­struc­tured in Oc­to­ber, when Co­hen slashed a quar­ter of Acor­da staff while cut­ting back R&D and SG&A ex­pens­es af­ter Ampyra rev­enue plum­met­ed and In­bri­ja rev­enue wasn’t near­ly enough to make up the dif­fer­ence. Ampyra rev­enue con­tin­ued to drop in Q4, falling from $37 mil­lion in Q3 to $25 mil­lion (the drug brought in $138 mil­lion in net rev­enue in 2018 Q3).

In 2017, Acor­da laid off 20% of its staff (which at the time amount­ed to over 100 staffers) in an ef­fort to pre­empt loom­ing loss­es over the Ampyra patent de­ba­cle. That move saved the com­pa­ny $21 mil­lion, but those moves didn’t ul­ti­mate­ly staunch the bleed­ing.

Acor­da didn’t an­nounce specifics Wednes­day on any plans to re­struc­ture its debt — which End­points News re­port­ed in Oc­to­ber sat around $345 mil­lion — oth­er than to say the man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions sale would pro­vide more flex­i­bil­i­ty to “re­duce” debt.

In the same way that the FDA signs off on flu vaccines every year without requiring large clinical trials to measure their efficacy, the FDA may employ a similar strategy in authorizing variant-focused versions of the mRNA vaccines.

As the world braces for more data on the latest variant Omicron, which may reduce vaccine efficacy, top vaccine developers like Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have promised they can pull together a new vaccine targeted against a specific Covid variant in about 100 days. Since Omicron emerged last week, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and J&J have all said they’ve begun work on Omicron-specific vaccines, if needed.

Dutch VC Forbion is hopping on the ever-lengthening SPAC train.

To be led by Jasper Bos, who joined Forbion Growth as a general partner back in May just after the fund closed at $428 million, Forbion European Acquisition will target late-stage opportunities in the life sciences industry in Europe to merge with and bring onto Nasdaq.

Cyril Lesser, senior controller at Forbion, will be the CFO while Bos serves as CEO.