The cell and gene therapy company is cutting 47 employees and its entire lupus program to focus resources on two CAR Ts. The move follows a reconfiguration last year to move into immunology.
Caribou Biosciences’ latest pivot to immunology is not going to plan. The cell and gene therapy company is laying off nearly one-third of its workforce and ending work on its lupus pipeline, according to an SEC filing Thursday. That leaves the biotech with just two remaining assets, both allogeneic, or “off-the-shelf,” CAR T products for a variety of different cancers.
Caribou had announced plans to make a move into the autoimmune space late last year, after getting Fast Track designation for its CAR T treatment CB-010 for systemic lupus erythematosus. In January, it announced a Phase I trial testing CB-010 for lupus nephritis and extrarenal lupus but never dosed a patient.
Now, the company is pivoting back to its roots in cancer. CB-010 is being tested for B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, while CB-011 is being trialed in multiple myeloma.
“To ensure Caribou is strongly positioned to emerge from these challenging times and deliver these potentially value-generating datasets, we have made the difficult decision to strategically prioritize our resources on CB-010 and CB-011 for oncology indications,” Caribou president and CEO Rachel Haurwitz said in a statement Thursday.
Caribou is also stopping a Phase I trial for CB-012 for relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia, because “additional data would be needed to advance this program, taking time and resources that can be dedicated to CB-010 and CB-011,” as the company put it in its statement.
The workforce reduction will cost Caribou between $1.8 and $2 million, and winding down the lupus trials another $0.7–$1.5 million. Caribou estimates the changes will be finalized by June and that with cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, it has a $212.5 million runway to last into the second half of 2027.
Following the cost savings and workforce reductions, Caribou is now planning Phase I readouts for both drugs in the second half of 2025.
