Beware: ghosts of biotech’s past.
Welcome to Fierce Biotech’s graveyard, a yearly ritual in which we remember the companies that shuttered operations in 2024. We don’t take these closures lightly; each one marks a difficult decision made after funds dry up or a clinical trial misses the mark, and every closure heavily impacts employees and patients alike.
Last year, biotech shutdowns spiked. Thankfully, 2024’s numbers are a little lower, dropping from the 27 closures in 2023 to 22 this year.
As we’ve done in previous years, biotechs included have either already closed their doors or are on their very last leg and about to sputter out. Below, you will find the former: 17 closures since last year’s list.
One of the biggest biotech sinkers is a failed clinical trial, with numerous companies closing up shop this year on the heels of a trial flop, such as Tracon, Aslan, Synlogic and Athersys.
In the summer, Tracon decided to wind down operations weeks after an injectable immune checkpoint inhibitor that was licensed from China failed to meet the main goal in a pivotal rare cancer trial. The subcutaneous PD-L1 inhibitor, dubbed envafolimab, triggered responses in four out of 82 patients who had already received therapies for undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma or myxofibrosarcoma, according to a July 1 data drop. The 5% response rate was below the 11% rate the San Diego-based biotech had hoped for.
Though envafolimab has already secured a regulatory nod in China, the phase 3 results ended Tracon’s plans to submit the injectable for possible FDA approval.
Initially, CEO Charles Theuer, M.D., Ph.D., said the company was moving to “immediately reduce cash burn” while seeking strategic alternatives. By the end of July though, the biotech’s board of directors decided to terminate its workforce and wind down.
Earlier in the year, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Synlogic stopped operations after revealing a pivotal phase 3 study of its lead phenylketonuria drug would likely miss its primary endpoint.
The company laid off more than 90% of its workforce, with remaining employees helping discontinue the late-stage study across trial sites and assisting in a “strategic review” of the company.
“We all took on a big challenge—to develop a new treatment modality—and to do something nobody had done before,” Synlogic CEO Aoife Brennan wrote in a February LinkedIn post. “Ultimately, every technology must be tested in a phase 3 trial in patients living in the real world and, despite our hard work, our innovation came up short.”
As of Aug. 8, the biotech was still evaluating its options.
Synlogic is one of the five companies included in our ghost edition of the graveyard, or biotechs that haven't hammered the final nail in the coffin quite yet.
Several of the biotechs above have filed for bankruptcy, and while bankruptcy isn't the same as closing up shop, it narrowly limits future options and is highly indicative of the company’s trajectory.
In February, a Fierce Biotech analysis found that biotech bankruptcies peaked in 2023, with more biotechs filing for bankruptcy than any year since 2010. Last year, 18 companies filed for bankruptcy protection compared to eight in 2022, which had previously held the 10-year record for the highest number of bankruptcies per year. Many of the biotechs on 2023’s bankruptcy list later crossed over to last year’s graveyard.
Which brings us to another vital ingredient in the successful biotech elixir: money. A business can’t run without financing, a lesson Walking Fish Therapeutics unfortunately learned the hard way.
The B-cell therapy company closed earlier this year after a lead investor backed out of a series B round.
At the time, CEO Rusty Williams, M.D., Ph.D., told Fierce Biotech that the company was about to lock in the fresh capital and use the funds to enter the clinic. Then, an unnamed top investor pulled out, citing concerns about the price of a multiyear lease. The decision came after Walking Fish secured two federal grants to ease the pressure on internal financiers.
“It was a shock,” the CEO said. “This investor just pulled out abruptly and said they wanted to shut down the company.”
Consequently, 35 employees were laid off. The abrupt shuttering came two years after Walking Fish raised $73 million in a series A fundraise.
Ultimately, Williams said the cost of cell therapy manufacturing and associated clinical trial costs were difficult to overcome. The painful realization has led other cell therapy players to pivot to treat autoimmune conditions while several Big Pharmas have decided to double down on past wins instead of channeling money to the high-risk, resource-heavy area. The sentiment is similar for investors, who have raised clinical data expectations since since the financing highs seen at the height of the pandemic, and are now instead more likely to only put money in areas backed by late-stage or proven science.
For cell therapy biotech Catamaran Bio, the challenges were too great to overcome.
“We still believe strongly in the potential of allogeneic therapies to address unmet needs in solid tumor indications, and our work to develop the Tailwind platform has been highly productive," Catamaran's CEO Alvin Shih wrote in a January LinkedIn post. "However, the financing environment for early-stage companies like ours in the cell therapy space continues to be challenging, and the time and resources required to achieve a meaningful clinical readout made it impossible for us to proceed on our intended path."
Meanwhile, several biotechs that aren't listed yet—such as Tome Biosciences, MEI Pharma and Entero Therapeutics—have entered extreme danger zones. Young gene editor Tome is laying off 131 staffers, or what is thought to be the company's entire workforce, while MEI is grappling with a failed merger with Infinity Pharmaceuticals after the latter filed for bankrupcty. At Entero, all nonessential employees were terminated as a creditor came calling this August. While the companies haven't publicly shuttered, the outlook appears grim.
Overall, the drop in biotech closures compared to 2023 may point to a continued gradual market recovery. Of course, tracking closures isn’t an exact science, with public companies much easier to follow and private businesses able to fold without most of the industry ever knowing. As always, please reach out to a member of the Fierce Biotech team if you have word on a closure.
We hope the graveyard will be a few plots smaller this time next year.