Acelyrin is officially ending development of an experimental medicine it referred to as a “
diamond in the rough
” and that served as the foundation for one of the
largest biotech IPOs
in recent years.
Izokibep has been shelved after failing to hit the primary and secondary endpoints in a Phase 2b/3 study in an inflammatory eye disease known as uveitis. The Los Angeles biotech
said
Tuesday night that it won’t make any additional investment in the small protein therapeutic that inhibits IL-17A.
“We are very grateful to all the patients, families and clinical investigators for their time and effort put into this trial, and, like them, we are disappointed that it did not meet its primary endpoint,” Acelyrin CEO Mina Kim said in a statement.
The biotech’s stock price
$SLRN
was down about 16% before Wednesday’s opening bell.
The failure was “not terribly surprising and was viewed as a high-risk event by investors,” TD Cowen analyst Tyler Van Buren wrote in a Wednesday note.
Acelyrin had already ditched plans for the asset in hidradenitis suppurativa and psoriatic arthritis when it trimmed its pipeline, including scrapping work on an anti-c-Kit program known as SLRN-517, and
laid off 33% of its staff
in August. It was a major pullback that occurred just three months after the
founding CEO left with little reason
.
Acelyrin in-licensed izokibep from Affibody in August 2021, but the drug had its big clinical flop a few months after the company’s $540 million IPO in May 2023. That year, the biotech and its contract research organization also had a
public dispute
about the handling of another trial.
This week’s update won’t affect the company’s ongoing “organizational or operational” plans, Acelyrin said, given the changes it already made in August. Its sole clinical focus now is an under-the-skin drug known as lonigutamab, which it got by way of its acquisition of ValenzaBio in 2023. It plans to start a Phase 3 trial of lonigutamab in thyroid eye disease early next year.
Acelyrin reiterated that it has enough money to get through Phase 3 studies and BLA-enabling work for lonigutamab. It had cash, equivalents and marketable securities balance of $562 million at the end of September, and that should carry the company into the middle of 2027, it said.
Kim said the biotech will also look for “selective and opportunistic” ways to bring more assets into its pipeline.