The dev­as­ta­tions of the pub­lic mar­kets and the re­peat­ed re­jec­tions hand­ed down by the FDA have added up to a dim fu­ture for Zosano Phar­ma as it ap­pears the 16-year-old biotech’s jour­ney is com­ing to an end.

The Fre­mont, CA biotech filed for bank­rupt­cy on Wednes­day and is cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing as a “debtor-in-pos­ses­sion” and in­tends to rid it­self of “sub­stan­tial­ly all of its as­sets” over the course of the Chap­ter 11 case, Zosano said Thurs­day morn­ing.

Those as­sets in­clude a mi­graine drug that the FDA re­ject­ed in 2020, a Covid-19 vac­cine de­liv­ered via a mi­cronee­dle patch, an os­teo­poro­sis drug, can­cer vac­cines and var­i­ous oth­er pro­phy­lac­tic vac­cines for kids and adults, ac­cord­ing to Zosano’s web­site.

Zosano is one of a few biotechs to wind down op­er­a­tions dur­ing the past few months as the un­re­lent­ing pub­lic mar­kets have wiped away vast amounts of val­ue from many drug de­vel­op­ers af­ter a pan­dem­ic boom could no longer keep the in­dus­try on green­er pas­tures. Flag­ship Pi­o­neer­ing-found­ed mi­cro­bio­me biotech Kalei­do Bio­sciences shut down in April and Or­p­hazyme sold it­self through the help of the Dan­ish courts last month.

It’s been a par­tic­u­lar­ly tough few months for Zosano’s em­ploy­ees. The com­pa­ny laid off 31% of its work­force in March and then laid off an­oth­er 37% just a month lat­er, per SEC fil­ings. And, fur­ther ce­ment­ing a cloudy fu­ture for Zosano, the biotech’s clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and med­ical af­fairs VP Don­ald Keller­man left the com­pa­ny, ef­fec­tive June 1.

Af­ter get­ting the no-go from the FDA a few years ago for its po­ten­tial mi­graine med, Zosano at­tempt­ed to re­sub­mit, but the FDA again had dis­agree­ments over the drug. In April, the agency gave the com­pa­ny a 12-month ex­ten­sion to re­sub­mit the NDA for M207, but Zosano said that month that it would sus­pend the pro­gram to pre­serve cash.

As of April 26, Zosano had about $11.4 mil­lion in cash and cash equiv­a­lents and was work­ing with fi­nan­cial ad­vi­sor Sier­ra­Con­stel­la­tion Part­ners to fig­ure out a fu­ture for its as­sets.

Astellas and Sutro Biopharma are linking arms on a new field of antibody-drug conjugates that they hope will improve upon existing cancer immunotherapies.

The Tokyo pharma will dole out $90 million in cash for the collaboration, the companies said Monday afternoon. That upfront payment will extend the South San Francisco biotech’s runway from late 2023 into the first half of 2024, Cowen analysts noted.

Though Decibel Therapeutics has largely pivoted toward gene therapies for the inner ear, its lead clinical candidate simply aims to protect cancer patients from chemotherapy-induced hearing loss. On Tuesday, the biotech presented its first efficacy data for the program, and execs like what they see.

Decibel reported interim results from a Phase Ib study showing the experimental drug, dubbed DB-020, largely protected a small group of patients from losing their hearing. Researchers used a particularly unique study design, administering the compound in one of each patients’ ears before they received cisplatin chemotherapy and placebo in the other.

In November, Pfizer disclosed it’s spun out the Phase II dual JAK1/TYK2 inhibitor to a startup formed in collaboration with an unnamed, experienced partner.

We now know who the partner is. And as Pfizer and Roivant officially take the wraps off Priovant Therapeutics, the companies reveal that they have started two registrational trials of the drug, brepocitinib, as part of a broader plan to develop a big, first-in-class franchise spanning multiple orphan and specialty autoimmune diseases.