An­oth­er biotech is lin­ing up to cut a piece of its pipeline to ex­tend its cash­flow. The Boston-based, can­cer-cen­tered biotech Ike­na On­col­o­gy is look­ing to make some changes to its pipeline, in­clud­ing a cull of one of its ear­ly-stage pro­grams.

Ike­na an­nounced this week that af­ter con­duct­ing a “port­fo­lio re­view,” it will dis­con­tin­ue the in­ter­nal clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of its can­di­date IK-007, an EP4 an­tag­o­nist, and that it is “ex­plor­ing strate­gic al­ter­na­tives” for the drug.

The biotech did state that clin­i­cal da­ta from IK-007 in mi­crosatel­lite sta­ble col­orec­tal can­cer will still be pre­sent­ed in a poster at the 2022 Eu­ro­pean So­ci­ety for Med­ical On­col­o­gy Im­muno-On­col­o­gy Con­gress.

Ac­cord­ing to clin­i­cal­tri­als.gov, the can­di­date was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed in a Phase I com­bi­na­tion with Mer­ck’s an­ti-PD-1 drug Keytru­da in pa­tients with ad­vanced or pro­gres­sive mi­crosatel­lite sta­ble col­orec­tal can­cer, with the tri­al start­ing in 2018.

An Ike­na spokesper­son told End­points News in an email:

IK-007 is a lega­cy im­munol­o­gy pro­gram from our ear­ly days as a com­pa­ny. While it has and is de­vel­op­ing in­ter­est­ing re­sults, the de­ci­sion to de-pri­or­i­tize IK-007 was part of a port­fo­lio re­view to help stream­line our ac­tiv­i­ties and pri­or­i­tize our work in tar­get­ed on­col­o­gy. The repri­or­i­ti­za­tion al­so con­tributed to the ex­ten­sion of our run­way in­to 2025, ad­vanc­ing our tar­get­ed on­col­o­gy clin­i­cal and dis­cov­ery pro­grams to their next in­flec­tions, in­clud­ing our newest MEK-RAF com­plex de­vel­op­ment can­di­date, IK-595, through IND-en­abling stud­ies and IK-930, our nov­el TEAD in­hi­bi­tion pro­gram, through ini­tial clin­i­cal da­ta.

Though the move ex­tends Ike­na’s cash, it does not in­clude any po­ten­tial li­cens­ing rev­enue from the IK-175 pro­gram that is cur­rent­ly in de­vel­op­ment with Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, which is el­i­gi­ble for opt-in through ear­ly 2024.

In­stead, Ike­na will be turn­ing its fo­cus on­to an­oth­er one of its oral can­di­dates, IK-595, which will be its first pro­gram in the RAS path­way. Ike­na an­tic­i­pates that its can­di­date, which is still in ear­ly stages, may be el­i­gi­ble for an IND fil­ing at some point in the sec­ond half of next year, with “pre­clin­i­cal dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion da­ta” al­so planned to be pre­sent­ed in the first half of 2023, the com­pa­ny said in a re­lease.

Ike­na al­so plans to forge ahead with its TEAD in­hibitor, IK-930, which is cur­rent­ly in Phase I, and plans to un­veil more da­ta on the pro­gram next year. But Ike­na is not the on­ly biotech that has re­cent­ly had to make some ad­just­ments to its pipeline to stretch its cash.

Ear­li­er in No­vem­ber, Seat­tle-based Ne­oleukin stopped work on its can­di­date NL-201, a de no­vo IL-2/IL-15 ag­o­nist, af­ter Phase I da­ta did not show “sig­nif­i­cant im­muno­genic­i­ty” even af­ter “mul­ti­ple cy­cles of ther­a­py.”

Delaware-based on­col­o­gy biotech Pre­lude Ther­a­peu­tics al­so halt­ed the de­vel­op­ment of one of its as­sets, called PRMT5, and has de­cid­ed to fo­cus on its oth­er pro­grams as well.

These culls al­so come amid a wave of re­cent lay­offs among small­er biotechs.

Following a promise last year to go “big and fast in breast cancer,” Gilead has secured a win for Trodelvy in the most common form.

The drug was approved to treat HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer patients who’ve already received endocrine-based therapy and at least two other systemic therapies for metastatic cancer, Gilead announced on Friday.

Trodelvy won its first indication in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer back in 2020, and has since added urothelial cancer to the list. HR-positive HER2-negative breast cancer accounts for roughly 70% of new breast cancer cases worldwide per year, according to senior VP of oncology clinical development Bill Grossman, and many patients develop resistance to endocrine-based therapies or worsen on chemotherapy.