Octagon Therapeutics is winding down operations, its CEO
posted
on LinkedIn on Monday.
The biotech, with operations in Cambridge, MA, and Providence, RI, had been working on programs in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, plus a
partnership
in cardiometabolic pathology with Novo Nordisk.
But the nearly decade-old startup halted work on a lead B cell immunomodulator project and ran into “unresolved biology questions around a high-potential pipeline effort,” CEO Isaac Stoner wrote on LinkedIn.
Stoner wrote that he and the board made the decision to shutter the company. The Octagon co-founder was on the board alongside Slater Technology Fund managing director Thorne Sparkman, ICG Life Sciences venture partner Peter Kiener, Stellular Bio founder Jonathan Thon and Alia Ventures partner Ronald Lennox. Stoner became an executive-in-residence at Slater Technology Fund in January, according to his LinkedIn profile.
“The toughest part about this business is that you can execute perfectly and still confront a scientific no-go,” Stoner wrote on the LinkedIn post. “This decision is personally and professionally disappointing, and not the outcome that the patients we had hoped to serve deserved.”
Multiple other biotech chief executives commented on Stoner’s post and commended the decision, along with well wishes for Stoner and his team on their next chapters.
Octagon is at least the 10th biotech company to close its doors this year, following private startups like
Kojin
and
Lyndra
, and publicly-traded drug developers like
Third Harmonic
and
Viracta
.
Octagon formed in
2016
with the intention to create antibiotics but
shelved that mission
a few years later to go after autoimmunity.
“The company was founded on impressive academic pedigree and the management team had known each other for years. Our first program was based on a compelling approach to targeting central metabolism in the most dangerous bacterial pathogens,” Stoner
wrote in 2019
.
“However, as we put our heads down and began optimizing our interesting chemical hit, we watched the space further deteriorate,” Stoner wrote in that 2019 opinion piece in
Endpoints News
.
The upstart had raised about $14 million to date, according to venture data firm PitchBook.