Aduro Biotech has announced a restructuring plan after Novartis stepped back from a four-year cancer drug collaboration.
California-based Aduro, a clinical-stage biopharma, intends to reduce its current workforce by 51 employees (approximately 59 percent) across the organization, minimize its corporate facilities footprint and shut down the Aduro Biotech Europe headquarters in The Netherlands by the end of the third quarter of 2020.
In 2015, Aduro announced a collaboration with Novartis for the research, development and commercialization of novel immuno-oncology products derived from Aduro’s cyclic dinucleotide (CDN) approach to target the STING (Stimulator of Interferon Genes) receptor, that, when activated, is known to initiate broad innate and adaptive tumor-specific immune responses.
But in a a Securities and Exchange Commission filing last month, Aduro said that Novartis "removed" ADU-S100 — a STING drug candidate — from its portfolio because of lackluster clinical data.
Read the press release