23andMe is shutting down its therapeutics development division and plans to seek out buyers to find a new home for its in-house pipeline of DNA-informed immuno-oncology antibody drugs.
The consumer genetics company said it would lay off more than 200 employees, or about 40% of its workforce, to instead focus on the personalized DNA and ancestry tests that first made it famous as well as its telehealth platforms and the research services it provides for other drugmakers.
“We continue to believe in the promise shown by our clinical and preclinical stage pipeline and will continue to pursue strategic opportunities to continue their development. We remain deeply grateful to the patients, investigators and study staff for their participation in our clinical trials,” co-founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki said in a statement.
The company said it planned to wind down those ongoing studies as soon as practical. 23andMe currently lists two assets in early-stage testing.
First, there’s 23ME-00610, an immune checkpoint blocker targeting CD200R1, which aims to reignite the body’s ability to fight tumor cells. It’s being examined in a phase 1/2a study designed to enroll up to 15 patients for each of six different cohorts, spanning neuroendocrine cancers, kidney cancer, small cell lung cancer, or ovarian, fallopian tube or peritoneal carcinomas, as well as solid tumors found to have high microsatellite instability or mutational burden.
Second, 23ME-01473 is being studied in a phase 1 trial of people with advanced solid tumors. The dual-mechanism drug targets ULBP6, which is secreted by tumor cells and suppresses immune activity. 23andMe said it uncovered these targets by leveraging its massive database of genetic variants; it has also been exploring assets preclinically in immunology and inflammation.
The company previously announced results from both antibody programs in September, during the annual congress of the European Society of Medical Oncology. 23ME-00610 as a monotherapy showed one partial response in a patient with clear-cell renal cell carcinoma, while 23ME-01473 slowed the growth of non-small cell lung cancer in a patient-derived xenograft mouse model.
The layoffs and restructuring—which are estimated to incur about $12 million in one-time costs before yielding annual savings of more than $35 million—come shortly after 23andMe faced a potential delisting from the Nasdaq. The company completed a 1-for-20 reverse stock split in mid-October. By the end of that month, it announced it had raised its share price enough to meet the exchange’s requirements.
Prior to that, 23andMe’s independent directors—Roelof Botha, Patrick Chung, Sandra Hernández, Neal Mohan, Valerie Montgomery Rice, Richard Scheller and Peter Taylor—resigned from the board in September.
Earlier this year, Wojcicki announced plans to take the company private after its stock value collapsed by more than 97% compared to its multibillion-dollar market debut just three years ago.