AC Immune is reducing its workforce by around 30% and narrowing its pipeline to extend its cash runway by about six months.
Under its previous plan, the Swiss company expected its cash runway to end in the first quarter of 2027. The revised plan pushes the date back to the third quarter of 2027. AC Immune is eking more time out of the 127.1 million Swiss francs ($157.8 million) it had at the end of June by trimming its in-house pipeline.
The internal pipeline now consists of the phase 2 Parkinson’s disease prospect ACI-7104.056 and a pair of preclinical programs against NLRP3 and alpha-synuclein. AC Immune has removed antibodies against ASC and TDP-43, plus a morphomer-antibody drug conjugate (morADC), from its preclinical pipeline. Last year, AC Immune CEO Andrea Pfeifer, Ph.D., said morADCs could become the biotech’s “prime focus.”
Partnered programs now make up half of the company’s pipeline. AC Immune is continuing to work with Johnson & Johnson and Takeda on active immunotherapies against Tau and amyloid-beta, respectively. The partnered Alzheimer’s disease assets are in phase 2. AC Immune also has an intracellular-targeted Tau program that is partnered with Eli Lilly and is in preclinical development.
The biotech is laying off staff as part of the changes. AC Immune ended last year with 172 employees. The company’s latest corporate presentation put its headcount at about 170. As part of its attempt to reduce the figure by around 30%, AC Immune has started the consultation process required under Swiss employment law. The company expects to fully implement the changes by the end of the year.
AC Immune’s cash runway, which excludes anticipated business development milestone payments, goes well beyond interim clinical data from the in-house ACI-7104.056 and Takeda-partnered ACI-24.060. The in-house data are due this year, with results on the Takeda-partnered program scheduled to follow in the first half of 2026.