Ham­mered hard by a sur­pris­ing FDA re­jec­tion, Io­n­is spin­out Akcea of­fers an ex­pla­na­tion and then chops 1-in-10 staffers

Akcea re­port­ed in an SEC fil­ing Thurs­day af­ter­noon that it is chop­ping 10% of its work­force as a re­sult of the FDA’s sur­prise re­jec­tion of volane­sors­en, their drug for reg­u­lat­ing plas­ma triglyc­eride for pa­tients with rare cas­es of fa­mil­ial chy­lomi­crone­mia syn­drome. The pink slips were hand­ed out the same day at the biotech, which is run by CEO Paula Soteropou­los.

The com­pa­ny al­so of­fered its first ac­knowl­edg­ment of what went wrong, and how it hopes to deal with the cri­sis.

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