Silverback to restructure workforce to support prioritized development

New York, USA-based biotech Silverback Therapeutics (Nasdaq: SBTX) saw its shares close down 8.5% at $3.21, having fallen as low as $3.06 on Friday, after it announced it is shutting down its targeted oncology programs and cutting its workforce by 27% as it refocuses resources on developing chronic hepatitis B drugs and its ImmunoTAC drug discovery platform.

“Upon comprehensive review of our clinical and preclinical data for our TLR8 oncology programs, we have made the decision to discontinue the development of SBT6050 and SBT6290, and focus our resources on SBT8230 for chronic HBV as well as our ImmunoTAC discovery programs,” said Laura Shawver, chief executive of Silverback.

Silverback has discontinued the SBT6050 development program. In the Phase I/Ib trial, a total of 58 patients were enrolled and received SBT6050 as monotherapy and in combination with a checkpoint inhibitor at dose levels ranging from 0.15mg/kg through 1.2mg/kg with the length of patient experience ranging from 2 weeks through 41 weeks. A dose response was observed in serum and intratumoral exposure, and in pharmacodynamic markers, inclusive of data that demonstrates immune activation in biopsies collected from patients after treatment. Further development was discontinued based on limited monotherapy anti-tumor activity and cytokine-related adverse events that limited the dose in combination with pembrolizumab.