Sensei and Instil Bio let go large chunks of workforces, shift pipelines

Clinical trial disappointments have led Sensei Biotherapeutics and Instil Bio to lay off 40% and 60% of employees, respectively.

A trial flop on its lead program, pushback from a German billionaire stockholder and a massive stock slide precede the pipeline makeover at Sensei. The biotech had 44 full-time workers as of Nov. 1 and will shutter its Boston research site.

With the focus turned to a preclinical asset, the biotech will keep the lights on at a Rockville, MD research facility and a small Boston business office.

The company will ask for clinical trial clearance of the antibody, known as SNS-101, by April 2023, Sensei said Thursday. After a February 2021 IPO, Sensei went through multiple hurdles, including discontinuing lead program SNS-301, which attracted 11% stockholder Christian Angermayer’s investment and led to his call for a cash dividend last month.

John Celebi

“We are committed to providing support for our impacted colleagues and to helping them identify other opportunities during this transition,” president and CEO John Celebi said in a statement. Moves were also made in the C-suite, with SVP Edward van der Horst promoted to CSO, and R&D chief Robert Pierce switched to a consulting role yesterday.

Sensei’s stock price $SNSE slid nearly 8% before the opening bell. The company said the narrowed pipeline and headcount will extend cash runway from the first quarter of 2025 to the second half of that year.

Meanwhile on Thursday morning, Instil Bio is letting go about 60% of its US employees, the biotech said, leading to a drop of 10% in the share price $TIL before markets opened.

The biotech had 463 employees at the end of June, per SEC filings. Based in Dallas, operations also include research and cell therapy manufacturing facilities in Los Angeles and Manchester, UK. Multiple employees began posting to LinkedIn yesterday that they were “open to work” and looking for new jobs.

In conjunction with the major reorganization, Instil axed a Phase II trial of its asset ITIL-168, which was being investigated in patients with advanced melanoma, and also folded a Phase I study testing the autologous cell therapy — in combination with Keytruda — in patients with advanced solid tumors.

“After an analysis of the potential scenarios to restart and complete a registration-enabling cohort in advanced melanoma in the DELTA-1 trial, the Company has decided to prioritize the CoStAR-TIL platform,” Instil said in its press release.

Instil stopped letting new patients into the studies earlier this fall as the biotech was looking into a “recent decrease in the rate of successful manufacturing” of the tumor infiltrating lymphocyte therapy.

At the time, Instil also put up a yellow light on a Phase I of ITIL-306 in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. The dose escalation trial has resumed, according to the Thursday update, and is the new focus of the cell therapy developer. Data from dose escalation cohorts, which also include patients with ovarian cancer and renal cell carcinoma, will come out next year.

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