NightHawk Biosciences lays off 14% of R&D workforce, pivots to focus on CDMO Scorpius Biomanufacturing

NightHawk Biosciences laid off 14% of its workforce in R&D in order to focus on its contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), just a little over a month after the company’s CEO said it was continuing its R&D activities and was “highly encouraged” by preclinical data.

The decision to lay off 13 employees was made after the board of directors approved a “refocus and restructuring plan” to axe “non-core assets” and reduce operating costs, as NightHawk builds up its CDMO Scorpius Biomanufacturing, the company said in SEC filings Tuesday. 

NightHawk added that it believes switching its focus to Scorpius represents “its best opportunity for success.”

The layoffs are expected to save the company about $1.8 million each year and it said it had about $18.6 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments as of June 30.

In August, NightHawk said in its second-quarter report that the company had generated $700,000 in revenue from process development and $500,000 from service revenue, thanks to the company’s San Antonio CDMO facility. But the company had spent $5.7 million on R&D during the second quarter on several of its early candidates.

Jeff Wolf

At the time, CEO Jeff Wolf said in a statement that NightHawk’s strategy was to “further develop these potential therapies through key milestones, with a focus on licensing or partnering these assets to maximize value for shareholders.”

Wolf also said that development of biomanufacturing was continuing to progress, along with investment in the San Antonio facilities, with plans to evaluate “a variety of strategic options to advance these operations.”

NightHawk has just one approved product, Anthim, a monoclonal anthrax antitoxin, which the company says is included in the US Strategic National Stockpile in case of a potential anthrax attack. NightHawk acquired the antitoxin at the end of 2022 when it bought defense-focused biotech Elusys.

Along with Scorpius and Elusys, NightHawk also has Skunkworx as a subsidiary, which is described as a precision medicine company that uses libraries of antibodies and small proteins to identify sites on proteins that are relevant to diseases.

manufacturing
antibodies
biotech