Investor David Lazar has come to the rescue of cash-strapped Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals, pumping $3 million into the biotech as well as taking on the top role and shaking up the board.
The New Jersey-based biotech ended September with just $3 million in the bank and the expectation that these funds would run out before year-end. The tight deadline led Cyclacel to announce a month ago that it would reduce operating costs while it considered “a range of appropriate strategies to realize value from [the biotech’s] assets,” including a transaction with 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 announced Friday morning that Lazar has decided to invest $3.1 million into the company via a stock purchase.
In exchange, the biotech will see a significant shake-up at the top, with Lazar taking over the CEO role on an interim basis from Spiro Rombotis, who will continue as a director. Five of the biotech’s board members will be departing, however, with Lazar bringing in one new member to the boardroom.
Against the backdrop of this reorganization, the board is continuing to direct the company’s management to find ways to reduce costs while it considers its strategic options. In the meantime, Cyclacel has secured a few weeks’ grace from the Nasdaq to meet the requirements needed to prevent its stock from being delisted.
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.