Ax­cel­la re­duces work­force by 85%, pri­or­i­tizes long Covid drug re­search

Af­ter miss­ing its pri­ma­ry goal in Phase IIa tri­als for its long Covid drug, Ax­cel­la Health an­nounced Wednes­day that it’s cut­ting 85% of its work­force, has hired a bank to ex­plore strate­gic al­ter­na­tives, and is reshuf­fling its pipeline.

As part of the re­struc­tur­ing, CFO Bob Crane and chief peo­ple of­fi­cer Vir­ginia Dean are leav­ing the biotech, and the com­pa­ny is now ex­plor­ing “a range of strate­gic al­ter­na­tives to max­i­mize share­hold­er val­ue,” in­clud­ing work­ing with an in­vest­ment bank — of­ten a sign that it will sell it­self or seek last-re­sort fi­nanc­ing.

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