Lexeo Therapeutics laid off 15% of its staff last month as part of a wider plan to siphon $20 million from its pipeline to fund the gene therapy biotech’s lead cardiac programs.
One of these lead assets is LX2006, an AAV-based gene therapy designed to treat patients with Friedreich's ataxia hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, by increasing expression of the heart muscle protein frataxin. Lexeo has been planning to launch a registration trial of the drug in 2026 based on a pooled analysis of two studies last month.
The other key candidate is LX2020, an AAVrh10-based gene therapy designed to deliver a functional PKP2 gene to cardiac muscle for the treatment of an inherited heart disease called PKP2-ACM. Lexeo is enrolling patients in a phase 1/2 trial with an interim readout pencilled in for the second half of 2025.
To keep the money flowing to these programs, Lexeo made the decision last month to redeploy around $20 million in capital from its preclinical and non-cardiac pipelines, the company revealed in its first-quarter earnings release Monday, May 12. This move included a “limited reduction in force impacting approximately 15% of employees.”
Lexeo entered 2025 with 72 full-time employees, of which the majority (50) were engaged in R&D activities.
“The updated capital structure is expected to enable the company to execute against key milestones for its clinical-stage pipeline, accelerate work to initiate a registrational study for LX2006 by early 2026, and maintain operational runway into 2027,” according to the release by Lexeo, which ended March with $106.9 million to hand.
The company did not go into detail about which parts of its wider pipeline would be most impacted by the resource reallocation. However, the fact that none of the biotech’s three Alzheimer’s gene therapies are namechecked in either this morning’s earnings release or a previous release in March suggests these candidates have been sidelined for the time being.
The most advanced of these Alzheimer's assets is LX1001, an AAVrh10-based gene therapy candidate designed to deliver the protective APOE2 allele into the central nervous system of APOE4 homozygous patients. LX1001 has already completed a phase 1/2 trial, although Lexeo mentioned in an SEC filing in March that it was “seeking business development opportunities” for this portfolio.