RallyBio is steering around more tight corners as it announces a further 40% reduction in staffers just weeks after discontinuing its lead drug program and just over a year after a similar cost-cutting drive.
These latest cuts, which affect nine roles, are set to be “substantially complete by the end of the second quarter of 2025,” the nanocap biotech said in its financial results Thursday morning.
This will cost the company around $1.7 million, “primarily for one-time employee severance and benefit costs, and excluding share-based compensation expense,” the company added.
This comes 15 months after RallyBio announced a 45% workforce cut, amounting to 19 positions, as it looked to extend its runway and focus on RLYB212, its lead program.
That drug had been in trials for the prevention of fetal and neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia, a rare maternal immune disorder.
A month ago, however, RallyBio discontinued work on RLYB212 after concentrations of the drug in the first person enrolled in a phase 2 trial fell short of the target range.
Given the axing of ‘212, Rallybio shifted its focus to its once-weekly low-volume C5 inhibitor RLYB116, as well as its other early-stage programs REV102 and RLYB332.
In its first-quarter update, the biotech said it was “on track to initiate dosing in the RLYB116 confirmatory clinical pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) study” in the second quarter, with results expected later this year.
At the end of March, RallyBio had $54.5 million on hand, enough to keep the company going into 2027.
“We are focused on advancing RLYB116 into a confirmatory pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic study this quarter, and believe that data from this study will demonstrate RLYB116’s potential to be a best-in-class therapeutic for patients with complement-driven diseases,” Stephen Uden, M.D., CEO of RallyBio, said in a statement.
“Leveraging our team’s deep expertise in the complement field, we are well-positioned to maximize RLYB116’s transformative potential across multiple billion-dollar market opportunities. Additionally, we believe significant value resides within our preclinical pipeline, which includes REV102 and RLYB332."