BioInvent forced to reorganize, ax staffers in wake of study failure

Shares at Sweden's BioInvent went into meltdown mode earlier this month when an experimental blood-thinner it was developing in partnership with Thrombogenics ($THR) failed in a head-to-head study with Xarelto. Today the other foot dropped. BioInvent is reorganizing in the wake of the trial disaster, laying off 21 of its 89 staffers and refocusing on a pair of experimental drugs further down the pipeline.

"We regret the fact that the changes in our organization will impact a number of our employees, but consider it necessary to take better advantage of the opportunities provided by positive study data later this year," noted CEO Svein Mathisen in a statement. "We are now focusing our resources on the most promising projects, for which we expect to present study results in two of the most advanced projects during the forthcoming quarter."

The focus now is on BI 204 for the treatment of acute coronary artery disease and its cancer projects, such as BI 505. 

BioInvent had a very bad day when it announced that it would be forced to dump TB-402 after it was edged out in the Xarelto study. Developers more often are going head-to-head earlier these days as they try to position their products for the marketplace. But the process is raising the stakes for trial outcomes, as BioInvent found out the hard way. And at the same time 402 was being deep sixed, the company also had to acknowledge that Roche was ending a partnership for TB-403.

BioInvent does have other big companies partnered on its antibody work, including Genentech.

- here's the press release

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