North­west Bio still hang­ing on; Five Prime's lat­est round of lay­offs claims 70

→ Pen­ny stock North­west Bio­ther­a­peu­tics is still hang­ing on. The com­pa­ny, which is de­vel­op­ing DC­Vax for sol­id tu­mor can­cers, has an­nounced that they’ve reached a set­tle­ment with the SEC. The com­pa­ny has agreed to pay a fine of $250,000 “in con­nec­tion with past weak­ness­es in its in­ter­nal con­trols” and the com­pa­ny will nei­ther ad­mit nor de­ny any vi­o­la­tions un­der the set­tle­ment.

→ Long-slid­ing biotech Five Prime Ther­a­peu­tics will lay­off 70 em­ploy­ees as part of a cor­po­rate re­struc­tur­ing as it strug­gles to find its foot­ing. The on­col­o­gy-fo­cused com­pa­ny has been in free-fall since late 2017, when its Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb-part­nered drug cabi­ral­izum­ab showed weak ef­fi­ca­cy and a trou­bling safe­ty pro­file in ear­ly-stage pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. In Jan­u­ary, they cut 41 jobs, about a fifth of its work­force at the time, and in Sep­tem­ber they tapped William Ringo as in­ter­im CEO af­ter Aron Knicker­bock­er re­signed. On Thurs­day, Ringo an­nounced the lay­offs. “The com­pa­ny will re­tain a small re­search group fo­cused on ad­vanc­ing three whol­ly-owned, late-stage re­search as­sets and will in­creas­ing­ly re­ly on out­sourc­ing and con­tract­ed ca­pa­bil­i­ties,” the com­pa­ny wrote.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER