Much ink has been spilled over the con­tin­u­ing wave of lay­offs hit­ting the biotech in­dus­try, and that doesn’t look to be stop­ping any­time soon.

Finch Ther­a­peu­tics re­port­ed Tues­day morn­ing that it would be lay­ing off 37 staffers, or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20% of its work­force, per an SEC fil­ing. The de­ci­sion to cut costs comes about a month af­ter Finch said the FDA had placed a treat­ment for C. dif­fi­cile in­fec­tions on par­tial clin­i­cal hold, and rough­ly three weeks af­ter paus­ing its he­pati­tis B pro­gram.

“This was a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion; how­ev­er, we be­lieve this de­ci­sion will put us in a stronger fi­nan­cial po­si­tion to ex­e­cute up­on our strate­gic pri­or­i­ties and con­tin­ue to de­liv­er on our mis­sion to har­ness the mi­cro­bio­me to serve pa­tients and their fam­i­lies,” CEO Mark Smith said in a pre­pared state­ment.

Finch shares $FNCH, al­ready down 64% since the start of the year, showed no change as the mar­ket opened Tues­day.

Tues­day’s lay­offs may have been in the works fol­low­ing a rough March, which saw the FDA hold and the he­pati­tis B pause. Reg­u­la­tors had re­quest­ed Finch pro­vide more in­for­ma­tion on its screen­ing pro­to­cols for C. dif­fi­cile in­fec­tions, the biotech said, re­port­ed­ly point­ing to is­sues at a man­u­fac­tur­er Finch had ac­quired while a Phase II study was un­der­way.

The man­u­fac­tur­er, Open­Bio­me, was placed on hold in late 2019, but Finch was al­lowed to con­tin­ue us­ing donor sam­ples from be­fore then in its study. The hold was re­leased in Jan­u­ary 2021, and Finch bought the com­pa­ny’s man­u­fac­tur­ing tech two months lat­er. Finch be­gan dos­ing Phase III pa­tients last No­vem­ber, but the FDA re­turned with ques­tions this past Jan­u­ary.

At the time it re­port­ed the hold, Finch al­so not­ed that some pa­tients were dosed in this study while the hold was in ef­fect. The com­pa­ny says it’s re­view­ing the mat­ter.

The biotech fol­lowed up at the end of March say­ing it had re­spond­ed to the hold no­tice and ob­tained ad­di­tion­al feed­back from the agency. Per Finch, ex­ecs not­ed reg­u­la­tors want­ed changes to the Phase III test­ing al­go­rithm used to di­ag­nose sus­pect­ed re­in­fec­tions, as well as more in­fo on the tri­al’s sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis plan. The com­pa­ny is ex­pect­ing “at least” a one quar­ter de­lay.

Finch’s March 31 up­date al­so re­vealed the biotech would be paus­ing he­pati­tis B ac­tiv­i­ties “fol­low­ing a strate­gic re­view” of its pipeline. The move will al­low Finch to fo­cus on its C. dif­fi­cile and autism spec­trum dis­or­der pro­grams.

The biotech, much like its in­dus­try com­pa­tri­ots, falls on hard times as 2022 is yet to let up on the sec­tor. Finch’s lay­offs come as part of a broad­er reshift­ing with­in the biotech space fol­low­ing record ac­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the pre­vi­ous two years.

Much of the down­turn has been cap­tured in the XBI, an in­dex mea­sur­ing the in­dus­try’s per­for­mance as a whole. It’s down about 30% on the year and down al­most 50% from its peak in Feb­ru­ary 2021. And some­times, the move­ments ap­pear to be hap­pen­ing ran­dom­ly: on Mon­day, for ex­am­ple, the XBI fell 5% de­spite the lack of ma­jor news.

Takeda on Tuesday morning made an announcement that almost 3,000 people with the rare disease known as hypoparathyroidism were fearing.

Due to unresolved supply issues and manufacturing woes, Takeda said it will cut its losses and discontinue its hypoparathyroidism drug, known as Natpara (parathyroid hormone), halting all manufacturing of the drug by the end of 2024.

The decision to not re-commercialize Natpara will be a blow to not only the 2,400 people who were awaiting supplies of their reliable injection since 2019, but also the additional nearly 400 people who were accessing the drugs via the company’s Special Use Program as Takeda sought to resolve these manufacturing issues over the past five years.

Astellas and Pantherna have expanded their November 2021 pact surrounding the latter’s mRNA platform to include a new target organ, the duo announced Tuesday morning, though they did not specify what that target is.

German biotech Pantherna is home to two platform technologies — one that designs mRNAs for non-vaccine therapies and another that designs LNPs. Astellas and Pantherna’s deal appears to mainly revolve around the first platform, which Astellas said it is using to research direct reprogramming, or turning cells from one kind into another without an intermediate stem cell phase.

KalVista took a beating Tuesday after announcing it would scrap a Phase II trial for one of its experimental drugs.

The biotech said in an early morning press release that it is terminating the study for KVD824 after multiple patients in every treatment group saw unsafe, elevated levels of certain liver enzymes. By ending the trial now, KalVista hopes to save some money and funnel it toward another study for its lead program, CEO Andrew Crockett said in a statement.