Fungi-focused biotech LifeMine Therapeutics is slimming down its staff and consolidating its operations to dig into clinical development of its lead asset, LifeMine CEO Gregory Verdine, Ph.D., confirmed to Fierce Biotech.
“There has been some rebalancing of capital and personnel deployment driven by the rapid advancement of our lead program, LIFE-001, into clinical testing soon, and the need to allocate capital for the development of this drug in multiple immunologic indications,” Verdine said in an email.
“We thank our affected employees for their passion, hard work and dedication in getting LifeMine to this important stage,” Verdine added.
At press time, LifeMine had not responded to further questions about the number of staff affected by the restructuring nor whether LIFE-001 is now the only asset in LifeMine’s pipeline.
LifeMine is also consolidating all of its internal operations into a new, 55,000-square-foot facility in Watertown, Massachusetts, Verdine said. The company previously had facilities in Cambridge and Gloucester in Massachusetts and in Basel, Switzerland.
Some of LifeMine’s restructuring has “been driven by the growth of a large external R&D force as we now transition into a clinical stage company,” Verdine added.
LIFE-001 is an injectable calcineurin inhibitor meant to suppress the T cells of patients receiving organ transplants so that an immune response doesn’t cause the body to reject the transplanted organ.
LifeMine was named to the 2022 Fierce 15 for the company’s work using artificial intelligence to sift through fungi genomes for potential new medicines. The biotech inked a deal with GSK in 2022 to develop three drug candidates based on LifeMine’s fungi-based drug discovery engine, and the company announced the deal at the same time as a $175 million series C fundraise.
The current status of the GSK partnership is not immediately clear—LifeMine and GSK had not responded to Fierce Biotech’s questions about the collaboration at the time of publication.