vTv Therapeutics cuts 65% of employees in shakeup; Freenome bags $300M in Series D to expand multiomics platform

vTv Ther­a­peu­tics has de­cid­ed to chop down its work­force by al­most two-thirds.

The High Point, NC biotech an­nounced Mon­day that it would piv­ot and now pri­or­i­tize its lead pro­gram, the oral glu­cok­i­nase ac­ti­va­tor TTP399, as it gears up for Phase III piv­otal tri­als.

The drug was grant­ed break­through ther­a­py des­ig­na­tion af­ter show­ing a 40% re­duc­tion in hy­po­glycemic episodes com­pared to place­bo, and back in Oc­to­ber vTv an­nounced pos­i­tive re­sults in a study show­ing no in­creased risk for ke­toaci­do­sis, a se­vere com­pli­ca­tion of di­a­betes.

And be­cause of that shift, vTv is un­der­go­ing the mas­sive re­struc­tur­ing, in­clud­ing cut­ting the work­force, adding ‘sev­er­al con­sul­tants’ and paus­ing de­vel­op­ment on an­oth­er drug — a PDE4 in­hibitor for pso­ri­a­sis.

‘It is al­ways dif­fi­cult to re­struc­ture but this al­lows us to fo­cus on TTP399 and our fu­ture growth,’ said vTv CEO and pres­i­dent Deepa Prasad. ‘We con­tin­ue to en­gage with the FDA to map out a clear and pos­i­tive path for­ward on our Phase 3 piv­otal stud­ies with the goal of im­prov­ing qual­i­ty of life for pa­tients man­ag­ing this chron­ic, bur­den­some dis­ease.’

On­col­o­gy-fo­cused Freenome rais­es $300M in Se­ries D round

South San Fran­cis­co’s Freenome to­day an­nounced a mas­sive Se­ries D haul this morn­ing, bring­ing in $300 mil­lion and push­ing Freenome’s to­tal fund­ing to over $800 mil­lion since 2014.

This round of fi­nanc­ing was led by Per­cep­tive Ad­vi­sors and Pe­ter Kolchin­sky’s RA Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, joined by ex­ist­ing in­vestors Ar­tis Ven­tures, Kaiser Per­ma­nente, No­var­tis and Ridge­back Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment. And with this kind of fund­ing, there were sev­er­al new in­vestors that tagged along: Lo­gos Cap­i­tal and Pure Vi­da In­vest­ments, to name two.

The fund­ing will go to­wards ad­vanc­ing Freenome’s col­orec­tal can­cer (CRC) screen­ing test and ex­pan­sion of its mul­ti­omics plat­form to oth­er can­cers. The com­pa­ny is al­so plan­ning to ex­tend its plat­form to de­vel­op tests for oth­er can­cers.

‘We ap­pre­ci­ate the shared be­lief our in­vestors have in what is pos­si­ble when it comes to fight­ing can­cer,’ said Freenome CEO Mike Nolan. ‘This fund­ing gets us clos­er to bring­ing our ear­ly can­cer de­tec­tion tests to every­one.’
https://endpts.com/vtv-therapeutics-cuts-65-of-employees-in-shakeup-freenome-bags-300m-in-series-d-to-expand-multiomics-platform/