Adicet Bio is handing out pink slips to 30% of its staffers in tandem with a pipeline restructure that includes discontinuing a clinical-stage allogeneic cell therapy.
The layoffs are expected to be “substantially completed” by the end of the third quarter, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) document filed July 23.
The cell therapy biotech didn’t specify the total number of staffers that would be impacted by the cuts. At the end of 2024, the company had 152 full-time employees, according to an annual SEC report.
The job cuts are connected to pipeline cuts, with Adicet discontinuing an early-stage clinical program dubbed ADI-270. The asset is an allogeneic gamma delta T-cell therapy being studied in a phase 1 trial for patients with advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma.
The biotech had announced the start of enrollment for the trial in November 2024. Given the discontinuation, Adicet is closing enrollment.
According to a July 23 data cut, five patients in the phase 1 trial who received the planned target dose level of ADI-270, plus a second lower dose, demonstrated a 100% disease control rate and a 20% best overall response rate.
No cases of cytokine release syndrome or immune effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome were reported in the phase 1 data cut, according to Adicet.
Instead, Adicet is turning its focus toward autoimmune diseases. The biotech is prioritizing AD1-001, an allogeneic gamma delta CAR-T being evaluated in a phase 1 study across multiple conditions including lupus nephritis and systemic sclerosis, among others.
In June 2024, the asset snagged fast-track designation from the FDA for certain lupus nephritis patients.
AD1-001 was being studied in a phase 1 dose-escalation cancer study that launched in 2021. However, the trial was halted prematurely in February of this year, according to ClinicalTrials.gov.
As of publication, Adicet had not responded to Fierce Biotech’s request for comment about the trial termination.
The company has also kept ADI-212, a gene edited and cytokine-armored clinical candidate targeting prostate-specific membrane antigen. The asset is currently in investigational-new-drug-enabling studies, according to Adicet’s updated pipeline page.
The workforce reduction paired with the pipeline prioritization is expected to stretch the biotech’s cash runway into the fourth quarter of next year.