Be­lea­guered Zaf­gen crushed af­ter FDA de­mands force it to dump lead drug

Stymied at the FDA with a lin­ger­ing clin­i­cal hold on its lead obe­si­ty drug, Zaf­gen is dump­ing the ther­a­py and re­treat­ing to a pre­clin­i­cal pro­gram in the pipeline.

The biotech an­nounced af­ter the mar­ket closed on Tues­day that it will now cir­cle the wag­ons around ZGN-1061 af­ter be­lo­ranib was linked with the death of two pa­tients in a piv­otal study. Zaf­gen al­so says it will once again re­duce its ranks, chop­ping 34% of the sur­vivors and cut­ting the pay­roll to 31. The re­or­ga­ni­za­tion is claim­ing the jobs of Patrick Lous­tau, pres­i­dent, and Ali­cia Sec­or, chief com­mer­cial of­fi­cer.

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