Two years af­ter Alex Den­ner ac­tivist at­tack, Iron­wood plots mass lay­offs as last clin­i­cal pro­gram goes up in smoke

A year and a half ago, when Iron­wood fin­ished split­ting it­self in two, they were left with just a pair of ex­per­i­men­tal med­i­cines in the clin­ic: a re­for­mu­la­tion of Linzess, their ap­proved drug for ir­ri­ta­ble bow­el syn­drome, and a new drug for per­sis­tent acid re­flux called IW-3718.

In May, the Linzess for­mu­la­tion failed a Phase II study. And now, in part two of a year-long dou­ble-wham­my for the Boston phar­ma, IW-3718 proved in­ef­fec­tive in its own large study. Both pro­grams will be dis­con­tin­ued, mark­ing a ma­jor set­back for Iron­wood and leav­ing the com­pa­ny fac­ing an emp­ty pipeline, huge lay­offs and, two years split­ting amid pres­sure from Alex Den­ner, an­oth­er re­struc­tur­ing.

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