An­oth­er day, an­oth­er biotech un­der­go­ing a sig­nif­i­cant shift thanks to the bear mar­ket.

Wednes­day’s vic­tim is Ap­plied Mol­e­c­u­lar Trans­port. This morn­ing the San Fran­cis­co-based biotech said it would lay off 52 em­ploy­ees and elim­i­nate three oth­er po­si­tions fol­low­ing res­ig­na­tions to re­duce its work­force by 40%. The firm is al­so chang­ing up its main fo­cus to hone in on its lead pro­gram, ef­fec­tive­ly hit­ting the pause but­ton on oth­er pipeline can­di­dates.

On top of that, there’s al­so some C-suite shuf­fling tak­ing place. The com­pa­ny’s co-founder and chief sci­en­tif­ic of­fi­cer Ran­dall Mrsny will be de­part­ing, AMT not­ed in an SEC fil­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, CFO Shawn Cross is mov­ing to pres­i­dent and COO, while Bran­don Hants earns a pro­mo­tion to CFO.

“It has been my great plea­sure and hon­or to work along­side Randy to build AMT in or­der to cre­ate and ad­vance nov­el oral bi­o­log­ic ther­a­peu­tics,” CEO and co-founder Tahir Mah­mood said in a state­ment. “Part­ing with the em­ploy­ees who have brought AMT to such an ad­vanced stage is a dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion.”

AMT’s shift comes less than two years af­ter its $154 mil­lion IPO in June 2020. At the time, the com­pa­ny not­ed it had doubts about be­ing able to con­tin­ue with avail­able cash. As of AMT’s first quar­ter re­port ear­li­er this month, the biotech had $126.5 mil­lion cash on hand, which it said would be enough run­way for the next 12 months.

But the com­pa­ny’s stock $AMTI is down about 70% for the year, as it’s proven vul­ner­a­ble to the biotech bear mar­ket much like many that went pub­lic dur­ing the pan­dem­ic IPO boom. AMT record­ed a $42.6 mil­lion loss in the first quar­ter as well, more than dou­ble the loss it record­ed in 2021’s Q1.

The new fo­cus will be al­most sole­ly on the biotech’s lead can­di­date, dubbed AMT-101. Re­searchers are de­vel­op­ing the drug can­di­date, an oral com­pound de­signed to tar­get IL-10 and cross the in­testi­nal ep­ithe­lial bar­ri­er with­out en­ter­ing the blood­stream, to treat in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­eases and sys­temic in­flam­ma­to­ry in­di­ca­tions.

AMT-101 is a po­ten­tial­ly multi­bil­lion-dol­lar drug, ac­cord­ing to Jef­feries an­a­lyst Chris How­er­ton, but ap­provals could be years away. Though AMT re­leased pos­i­tive Phase II da­ta in chron­ic pou­ch­i­tis last month, the re­al mon­ey mak­ers will come in ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis, Crohn’s dis­ease and rheuma­toid arthri­tis.

Phase II mod­er­ate-to-se­vere UC da­ta are ex­pect­ed some­time this quar­ter in com­bi­na­tion with an an­ti-TN­Fα for bi­o­log­ic-naive pa­tients. Even in a pes­simistic sce­nario, How­er­ton ex­pects an ap­proval in this in­di­ca­tion in 2027 with about $1 bil­lion in peak sales. The more op­ti­mistic side sees ap­provals in UC in 2027, and Crohn’s and RA in 2028.

AMT has not, how­ev­er, ex­pressed much pub­licly about go­ing af­ter the Crohn’s in­di­ca­tion. The dis­ease is not list­ed on the pipeline sec­tion of its web­site and it’s not cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing any stud­ies in Crohn’s.

Go­ing for­ward, AMT says it ex­pects to com­plete three re­main­ing Phase II stud­ies, with da­ta read­outs all com­ing this year. The on­ly oth­er an­nounced pipeline pro­gram, an oral IL-22 drug called AMT-126, re­cent­ly read out Phase Ia da­ta but the com­pa­ny is “eval­u­at­ing next steps,” sug­gest­ing a de­vel­op­ment pause.

Blueprint Medicines announced this morning that the second part of its study on Ayvakit in non-advanced systemic mastocytosis (SM) — a rare disease in which a type of white blood cells known as mast cells builds up — met all endpoints, but the biopharma left key questions unanswered.

In 212 patients, with 141 in the treatment arm and 71 in the control arm, patients who got Ayvakit saw an average 15.6-point decrease in their symptom scores compared to a 9.2-point decrease in the placebo arm at 24 weeks. In an extension study, those on Ayvakit saw their symptom scores drop by 20.2 points by week 48.

GSK has landed a new first from UNICEF — the first-ever contract for malaria vaccines, worth up to $170 million for 18 million vaccine doses distributed over the next three years.

The vaccine, known as Mosquirix or RTS,S, won WHO’s backing last October after a controversial start, but UNICEF said these doses will potentially save thousands of lives every year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” Etleva Kadilli, director of UNICEF’s supply division, said. “Continued innovation is needed to develop new and next-generation vaccines to increase available supply, and enable a healthier vaccine market. This is a giant step forward in our collective efforts to save children’s lives and reduce the burden of malaria as part of wider malaria prevention and control programmes.”