In cash saving mode, Oncorus cuts trial, staff, lease, and pipeline

In its third quarter report, Oncorus highlighted that it would report updated Phase I data on its lead candidate, an oncolytic virus therapy for solid tumors, before the end of the year.

Now, that readout, pushed back to early 2023, will be the last for ONCR-177. Oncorus announced this morning that it was stopping the clinical trial and cutting off development of the therapy, casting a shadow on its unreleased results.

In reaction, Oncorus’ stock price $ONCR fell by nearly 25% Wednesday morning to less than 50 cents a share. Oncorus went public during the pandemic-time biotech market boom, debuting at $16 a share and reaching a high of nearly $36 in 2021. Its stock is now down 97% all time.

Ted Ashburn

In an investor call, CEO Ted Ashburn said, “The decision to discontinue the Phase I development of this asset was based on the data. Unfortunately, and despite a promising safety and tolerability profile, we were not able to see the results that encourage us to continue and progress in this trial, particularly given the option that we gave to focus our resources on ‘021,” referring to one of Oncorus’ preclinical candidates.

Moving forward, the Andover, MA-based biotech said it would be “solely focused” on ONCR-021, a preclinical viral RNA immunotherapy. Its two other preclinical programs — ONCR-GBM and ONCR-788 — are also on hold unless Oncorus gets more money, it said in an SEC filing Wednesday morning.

ONCR-021 is made from a strain of coxsackievirus, and the biotech is planning to develop it in non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma, liver cancer, and kidney cancer. The biotech is planning to file an IND in mid-2023, Ashburn said during the investor call.

Alongside the pipeline cull, Oncorus has cut its staff by 20%. Oncorus said it expects its current runway to last through early 2024, unchanged from its Q3 report.

In September, the biotech terminated a building lease early as well, cutting it short from its original end date of 2024. That same month, Oncorus CSO Christophe Quéva resigned to take up the same role at DEM BioPharma.

The biotech industry has been battered hard by the market downturn. Companies have been laying off employees (Roivant, for instance, laid off 12% of its staff earlier this month), thinning down their pipelines (Ikena did yesterday), or even shutting down. One analysis showed that R&D deals and venture investments were returning to pre-pandemic levels, while IPOs were few and far between.

immunotherapy
biotech