Leap Therapeutics is expanding its layoff plans to encompass three-quarters of its workforce while scrapping its sole remaining clinical trial.
Only last month, the Massachusetts-based company was outlining plans to lay off half of its employees in order to focus its remaining finances on pursuing its sole clinical-stage asset, an anti-DKK1 antibody called sirexatamab.
But six weeks later, Leap said that 75% of the biotech’s workforce now needs to be jettisoned as part of a “retooled strategy” to “reduce spending and preserve capital.” The biotech ended March with $32.7 million in the bank but expects the layoffs to cost around $3.2 million in severance fees.
Leap entered 2025 with 52 full-time staff, of which 41 were employed in research and development roles.
The company is “exploring strategic alternatives,” including a potential sale or partnership for both sirexatamab and the FL-501, a GDF-15 neutralizing antibody in preclinical development for a wasting syndrome, Leap explained in the June 23 release. The biotech used the release to point to a “positive trend” for overall response rates (ORR) in the ongoing phase 2 study of sirexatamab in CRC.
Specifically, investigator assessment had shown an ORR of 33% for the sirexatamab arm compared to 20.2% for the placebo cohort. But to find a “statistically significant benefit,” Leap had to drill down into specific subgroups, such as patients with high levels of DKK1, who had no prior exposure to anti-VEGF therapy, or whose cancer had spread to the liver.
“Sirexatamab demonstrated a statistically significant benefit in patients with high levels of DKK1, no prior exposure to anti-VEGF therapy, or liver metastasis, with a positive trend on ORR and PFS in the full second-line CRC population,” CEO Douglas Onsi said in the release. “With the additional patient follow-up, we believe that the objectives of the DeFianCe study have been achieved.”
Despite claiming to see potential for sirexatamab in the results, Onsi explained that “due to current market conditions, we have decided to wind down the DeFianCe clinical trial and further reduce internal expenses.”
It marks the end of Leap’s ever-shrinking attempts to develop sirexatamab. Back in January, the biotech decided to scrap development of sirexatamab in combination with BeiGene’s anti-PD-1 antibody tislelizumab as a treatment for gastric cancer on the basis of an initial readout from the same phase 2 study. It was the unimpressive results from the other arm of that trial, evaluating sirexatamab as a first-line treatment for CRC, that persuaded the biotech to focus on the drug as a second-line treatment.
That readout saw Leap’s stock plunge below the $1 line, from which it has yet to recover. Then last month, the company said that it would also deprioritize sirexatamab in combination with Merck & Co.’s Keytruda to treat endometrial cancer.