ITeos Therapeutics is throwing in the towel. Two weeks after axing its GSK-partnered TIGIT candidate, the biotech has decided to wind down operations, sell its assets and return as much of its $600 million-plus cash pile to investors as possible.
Belgium-based iTeos went into May focused on working with GSK to take anti-TIGIT antibody belrestotug to a series of clinical readouts. That focus changed abruptly in the middle of the month, when iTeos and GSK saw progression-free survival data that fell short of the level they deemed clinically meaningful. A look at underwhelming data from another phase 2 trial sealed belrestotug’s fate.
At the time, iTeos said it would take immediate steps to save cash and review strategic alternatives. The biotech brought the review to a swift conclusion Wednesday, telling investors of its intent to wind down its operations to deliver near-term value to shareholders.
ITeos ended March with $624.3 million. Management will try to generate more cash by finding buyers for two phase 1 oncology programs, the ENT1 inhibitor EOS-984 and anti-TREM2 antibody EOS-215. The biotech is also looking to offload a preclinical obesity program targeting ENT1.
Winding down operations will, however, eat into iTeos’ cash pile. The biotech is forecasting $21.8 million to $24.7 million in employee termination costs. ITeos had 173 full-time employees at the end of last year. The cessation of operations at iTeos’ sites in Belgium is subject to a consultation process.
Contract and lease terminations and the belrestotug wind-down will add to costs, but iTeos is yet to come up with an estimate for the outlays. The biotech said it will spend around $11.1 million on winding down its other clinical development programs.
ITeos expects to substantially complete the wind down of its operations in the third quarter, although the biotech said it will take longer to bring its clinical development activities to a close. Even so, the process, from weak data to the shuttering of iTeos, looks set to advance far faster than is typical in biotech, where multimonth searches for strategic alternatives and long-term pivots to back-up assets are the norm.
Shares in iTeos jumped 28% to almost $11 in premarket trading.