Black Di­a­mond lays off 30% of its work­force and culls a drug from its 'Mas­terKey' chest

With every round of lay­offs, the dol­drums of the biotech bear mar­ket get ever dark­er and more de­press­ing. Black Di­a­mond Ther­a­peu­tics is the lat­est to cut ties with em­ploy­ees as the com­pa­ny ships off one as­set so it can fo­cus on the rest of its so-called “Mas­terKey” ther­a­pies.

The wiped-away drug is BDTX-189, an oral­ly avail­able small-mol­e­cule in­hibitor that tar­gets mu­ta­tions of EGFR and HER2 ki­nas­es. The drug, al­ready erased from the pipeline page on the com­pa­ny’s web­site, had been in a Phase I study, but Black Di­a­mond is do­ing away with the as­set be­cause of the “rapid evo­lu­tion of the treat­ment land­scape in non-small cell lung can­cer (NSCLC) har­bor­ing ei­ther EGFR or HER2 Ex­on 20 in­ser­tion mu­ta­tions,” the com­pa­ny said Mon­day morn­ing.

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