Up­dat­ed: Pick­ing up the pieces af­ter lead drug im­plod­ed, Rafael Hold­ings gives up on ear­ly R&D in fa­vor of deals

In the months since Rafael Hold­ings’ lead drug flunked two Phase III tri­als — in metasta­t­ic pan­cre­at­ic can­cer and acute myeloid leukemia — the lit­tle biotech has vowed to car­ry on with an ear­ly-stage pipeline.

But the ex­ecs in charge are now cut­ting that off, too.

Rafael will cur­tail its ear­ly-stage ef­forts, in­clud­ing pre­clin­i­cal re­search, the com­pa­ny dis­closed, in a move to re­duce spend­ing and fo­cus on find­ing clin­i­cal-stage pro­grams from out­side that it could po­ten­tial­ly in­vest in, ac­quire or in-li­cense.

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