Plus, news about Kezar Life Sciences, Elicio Therapeutics and Viracta Therapeutics:
Avidity seeks $250M in public offering: The money will be used in part to advance its pipeline, Avidity said. Last week, it released early Phase 1/2 data showing its RNA drug produced a 25% increase in the production of dystrophin. Avidity also put together a $461 million offering in June after it revealed additional data. Its stock $RNA was down about 8% on Wednesday morning.
Galera Therapeutics to shut down: All but three remaining employees will be laid off by the end of August. The shutdown is the result of Galera’s strategic options hunt that began in November of last year.
Kezar Life Sciences halts Phase 1 enrollment: The company said Wednesday that researchers saw no objective responses in an advanced solid tumor trial for KZR-261. The trial resources are being “reallocated” to another program, called zetomipzomib, being studied for patients with autoimmune hepatitis and lupus nephritis.
Elicio Therapeutics shrinks plans for long-term follow-up of Phase 1 studies: The company is eliminating a follow-up trial researching whether the ELI-002 program could be an adjuvant treatment for patients with certain kinds of pancreatic and colorectal cancer. Another trial will only collect overall survival figures.
Viracta Therapeutics lays off 23% of employees, pauses solid tumor work: It had 40 full-time employees as of March 31. The company also announced that its program called nana-val will move forward in relapsed/refractory EBV-positive peripheral T cell lymphoma.