Af­ter sell­ing a failed Cerulean for scrap val­ue, the ex­ec­u­tive team wins a bonus re­ward

By the end of the third quar­ter last year, Cerulean had burned through close to $196 mil­lion with­out much to show for it. The 2014 IPO floun­dered, de­spite the siz­zling boom biotech was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing. But that wasn’t too sur­pris­ing as their lead nano drug failed a Phase IIb tri­al for non-small cell lung can­cer.

Then the same drug failed again last year, for re­nal cell car­ci­no­ma, and the Waltham, MA based com­pa­ny was doomed. The CEO struck a part­ner­ship deal with No­var­tis, but net­ted on­ly $5 mil­lion up­front. So now the com­pa­ny is be­ing sold for parts. The lead, CR­LX-101, was wrapped up with its on­ly oth­er drug, the ear­ly stage CR­LX301, and sold to NewLink for on­ly $1.5 mil­lion. No­var­tis picked up the pipeline tech for a mere $6 mil­lion, a round­ing num­ber for the phar­ma gi­ant. A few lega­cy staffers in the hand­ful who are still left will get job of­fers.

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