Scoop: Roche-backed startup gives up on CD47, lays off all employees

Arch Oncology ended its work on developing an anti-CD47 antibody and most employees have left the company, Endpoints News has learned.

The Brisbane, CA, and St. Louis biotech scrapped clinical development of the antibody, dubbed AO-176, according to an automatic reply email from a former clinical operations director.

Laurence Blumberg

All Arch employees were let go and the company “was in a wind-down situation,” according to the LinkedIn bio of Arch’s former VP of human resources.

Ex-CEO and president Laurence Blumberg declined to comment, redirecting questions to board chair John McKearn. The RiverVest Venture Partners managing director did not reply to Endpoints inquiries as of publication time. RiverVest lists him as a former board member of Arch.

The startup disclosed a $105 million Series C from the likes of Roche’s VC arm and hedge fund titan Steve Cohen’s Point72 in April 2021. Roche Venture Fund remains a shareholder of Arch, a spokesperson for the Swiss pharma confirmed to Endpoints via email, but declined to comment further.

Several drug developers and their biopharma partners going after CD47, the so-called “don’t eat me” signal, have hit a fork in the road in the past few quarters. Zai Lab scrapped work on a CD-47 asset. AbbVie ended one trial with partner I-Mab. Gilead’s $4.9 billion acquisition of Forty Seven hit a partial hold snafu that lasted a few months before being resolved.

Others are moving forward. ALX Oncology, despite a massive stock slide in the past two years, is trudging along, snagging a $100 million loan last fall. Meanwhile, Pfizer’s $2.3 billion consumption of Trillium Therapeutics has led to a Phase II study of PF-07901801, formerly TTI-622. Exelixis also made a $40 million upfront bet on Dutch biotech Sairopa’s take on CD47. And little-known Liminatus Pharma teamed up with a SPAC last month to bankroll a CD47, immune checkpoint inhibitor, among other assets.

Arch had been testing its antibody in combination with Merck’s Keytruda in a Phase I/II study of patients with solid tumors, including relapsed, platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer and gastroesophageal cancer. The FDA tagged it with orphan drug status last January.

The biotech had touted a “highly differentiated” nature to its IgG2 antibody, claiming it had the potential to be safer and better than “other agents in this class of innate checkpoint inhibitors.” The startup said its antibody bound “preferentially to tumor cells” and not normal ones.

The Washington University spinout emerged in 2016 with $86 million from RiverVest, Roche’s VC arm, GSK’s biotech financing unit, Novo Ventures and others. It was originally named Tioma Therapeutics.

Construction cones feature front and center on Arch’s website.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to include comment from Roche and information from a former Arch Oncology employee.

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