Lisata is laying off 72% of its workforce, including its chief medical officer, as the solid tumor biotech tries to navigate a new future after a planned merger with cancer imaging company Kuva Labs fell apart.
Kuva's expected acquisition of Lisata was unveiled back in January, although the two companies' relationship dates back to 2024. Kuva licensed one of Lisata’s peptide products that improves delivery of anticancer drugs, certepetide, to complement Kuva’s platform technology NanoMark, and create a new class of magnetic resonance imaging agents to detect solid tumors.
The terms of the buyout were tweaked in March, with Kuva offering $5 per share of Lisata, plus a further $1 per share if an approval application was filed with any regulator for certepetide within seven years.
As recently as June, the acquisition appeared to be on track, with the deal due to close in the third quarter. But those plans have clearly gone awry, with Lisata revealing this morning that not only has the merger been terminated, but Lisata is now suing Kuva over an alleged breach of agreement.
Specifically, Lisata has filed suit in the Delaware Court of Chancery seeking damages for its shareholders as well as a $2 million termination fee that Lisata claims it is owed under the merger agreement. Fierce has contacted Kuva for comment.
With its buyer appearing to have walked away, Lisata said it needs to reduce its full-time workforce by 72% in order to “preserve cash and pursue alternative strategies.” The company expects severance costs to reach $1.2 million, and the departures will include Kristen Buck, M.D., Lisata’s executive vice president of R&D and CMO.
New Jersey-based Lisata was birthed in 2022 from the merger of Caladrius Biosciences and Cend Therapeutics, in which Lisata took Cend’s candidate certepetide. Certepetide has also attracted interest from the likes of CDMO Catalent, which in October 2025 secured the right to evaluate the drug as a potential payload for antibody-drug conjugates.