Viracta’s closure comes on the heels of its delisting from Nasdaq last month and multiple rounds of layoffs last year.
Viracta Therapeutics announced Wednesday that it will be shutting down its operations and laying off all of its remaining employees.
The closure and terminations, which were approved by the biotech’s Board of Directors on Monday, took effect at 5 p.m. PST on Wednesday. As part of the company’s shutdown, Viracta expects to absorb a one-time charge of around $100,000, mostly in staff wages and severance payments, according to an SEC document issued Monday.
Viracta’s Board of Directors and other top executives, including CEO Mark Rothera and chief medical officer Darrel Cohen resigned days before the announcement. To oversee the closure, the Board appointed Craig Jalbert, principal at the accounting firm Verdolino & Lowey, P.C., as Viracta’s CEO, president, chief financial officer, treasurer, corporate secretary and sole member of its Board.
Jalbert will be compensated $50,000 per year for three years, according to Viracta’s SEC filing.
Wednesday’s news marks the end of what has been a tough few months for Viracta. In August 2024, the biotech announced a resource realignment initiative that involved a 23% reduction in its headcount. At the time, the company also decided to pause work on Epstein-Barr virus-positive (EBV+) solid tumors and instead focus on EBV+ lymphomas.
A few months later, in November 2024, Viracta laid off another 42% of its staff in an attempt to divert even more resources into its lymphoma program.
In December, Viracta was forced to terminate even its program for EBV+ lymphoma in an effort “to maximize its cash runway” as its Board searched for another route to solvency. Still, Viracta stood by its science, emphasizing that the discontinuation of its lymphoma program was not due to safety concerns.
Last month, Viracta was delisted from Nasdaq for failing to comply with the minimum share price requirement.
Before shutting down, Viracta was pinning its hopes on nana-val, a combo treatment of the investigational nanatinostat, an anti-EBV molecule, and valganciclovir, an antiviral agent. Phase II data from the NAVAL-1 trial pointed to the potential of nana-val, which elicited a 33% overall response rate—including a 19% complete response rate—in patients with EBV+ peripheral T-cell lymphoma.
Viracta’s closure comes one day after Paris-based Valerio Therapeutics closed its U.S. operations and ended all clinical activities “in the context of the financing challenges” facing the biotech. Valerio will instead focus on early-stage research, particularly on single-chain antibodies, to “open new avenues for the company.”
