BioAtla is laying off 30% of staff as the biotech searches for partners for some of its conditionally active biologic (CAB) antibodies while eking out its cash to cover a slew of clinical readouts over the next couple of years.
Of the candidates that the San Diego-based company is now prioritizing for internal development, the most advanced is an anti-AXL antibody-drug conjugate called mecbotamab vedotin. BioAtla said phase 2 data from a small group of 17 patients with mKRAS mutation-expressing non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) presented at the European Lung Cancer Congress Thursday, March 27, showed “promising anti-tumor activity.”
The biotech is currently considering a “pan-MKRAS” strategy for developing the ADC in NSCLC, while eyeing a phase 2 readout in the first half of next year.
BioAtla’s prioritized pipeline also features BA3182, a CAB-EpCAM x CAB-CD3 T-cell engager being evaluated in a phase 1 dose escalation study in patients with unresectable or metastatic adenocarcinoma. The study is due to read out in the coming months, with a phase 2 expansion cohort expected to serve up data in the first half of 2026.
The company has two more candidates in midstage development that it is hoping to partner off. One of these is ozuriftamab vedotin, a CAB-ROR2 ADC in a phase 2 trial for HPV-positive squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. This population is “poorly served” by EGFR inhibitors, according to BioAtla, which has reported a 45% overall response rate from the trial so far.
The biotech has already initiated discussions with potential partners for evalstotug, an anti–CTLA-4 monoclonal antibody in phase 1 and 2 studies for a range of tumor types.
“We are encouraged by the differentiated clinical outcomes observed in our evolving CAB platform program datasets,” BioAtla CEO Jay Short, Ph.D., said in a full-year earnings report.
“As a result, we continue to advance multiple discussions with potential collaborators on our phase 2 assets, as well as initiate new ones,” Short added.
In order to “further reduce costs, extend runway and prioritize new patient recruitment to programs that we believe can provide transformative results,” the company has restructured the business. In practice, this means a workforce reduction of “over” 30%.
Employees most likely to be spared will be those “essential for supporting value creation, advancing our prioritized internal programs and partnering other clinical assets,” according to the March 27 release.
The biotech ended 2024 with $49 million in the bank, less than half of the $111.5 million it entered the year with. The reductions announced yesterday are expected to stretch out this remaining cash into next year.