Lyndra Therapeutics, which spun out of Moderna co-founder Robert Langer’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015, is winding down operations this week, a person with knowledge of the situation told Fierce Biotech.
“Lyndra is the first company to demonstrate weekly oral therapy is possible. The board is grateful to all the employees, partners and vendors that developed the LYNX drug delivery platform and brought it to the point where it is ready for a phase 3 safety study,” a spokesperson told Fierce Biotech in an email. “In the current operating environment, the company was unable to secure the financing required to complete the phase 3 safety study. We look forward to the day when the safety study can be executed and, if successful, allow oral weekly therapies to reach physicians and patients who can benefit from their remarkable potential.”
The wind-down officially began on March 26, the source said, with 60 employees set to be laid off when all is said and done. Craig Jalbert, who specializes in leading companies through wind-downs, has been brought in to head up Lyndra through its closing, the source added.
News of the closure was first reported by Boston Business Journal on March 25.
The goal of Lyndra’s platform was to create long-acting oral versions of medicines, such that a week’s worth of medicine could be taken in a single dose, for example. The company raised $101 million in a series E in 2023 and said at the time that Lyndra would use the funds to advance a long-acting version of schizophrenia drug risperidone, LYN-005.
Not long after that series E raise, Lyndra announced that the company’s weekly version of risperidone successfully delivered the same medicine levels as the daily version in a phase 3 trial with 90 patients. Lyndra had planned to start a phase 3 safety study in the first half of this year, the company said in a January release, but was unable to secure enough cash.