Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals will begin to slash its operating costs as the cancer-focused biotech explores "strategic alternatives on an expedited basis."
The New Jersey-based biotech ended September with just $3 million in the bank and the expectation that this would run dry before the year’s end. With the clock ticking down, Cyclacel this week announced that its board has directed the company’s management to reduce operating costs as it considers “a range of appropriate strategies to realize value from [the biotech’s] assets.”
Cyclacel’s pipeline consists of two clinical-stage candidates—a CDK2 and CDK9 inhibitor called fadraciclib and a PLK1 inhibitor called plogosertib—that have undergone phase 1/2 trials for solid cancers and lymphoma.
At one point the company also had high hopes for the nucleoside analog sapacitabine but, despite making it all the way to phase 3 in acute myeloid leukemia and midstage studies for other cancers, Cyclacel decided to give up and hand the rights back to Daiichi Sankyo in 2022.
One of the options now on the table for Cyclacel is a transaction with investor David Lazar. Lazar is the CEO of Activist Investing, a company that, according to its website, “specializes in ‘turnaround situations’ via activist investing in distressed public companies.”
Cyclacel pointed out in its Dec. 5 post-market release that there was no guarantee that an agreement with Lazar or any other “strategic alternative” would bear fruit and renewed its warning that without fresh funds the biotech would be forced to close up shop.