Repare Therapeutics is cutting its headcount by about 25%, with most of the layoffs concentrated in the company’s preclinical team, as part of what the company is calling a “strategic prioritization” of its R&D program.
The move will allow Repare to focus on clinical-stage oncology candidates. That includes lunresertib and camonsertib, which are currently being evaluated together in a Phase 1 trial for patients with ovarian and endometrial cancers. The trial is now in the dose expansion phase, data are expected in the fourth quarter, and a registrational trial could begin as early as 2025.
Camonsertib is also being investigated as a monotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer as part of a Phase 2 trial, with data expected in 2025. Roche had licensed camonsertib, an oral ATR inhibitor, back in 2022 but bowed out in February, shortly after paying $40 million for dosing the first patient with the drug in a different Phase 2 platform study. The deal originally carried up to $1.2 billion in milestones.
The company also has RP-1664, an oral inhibitor of PLK4, in a Phase 1 trial in adult and adolescent patients with TRIM37-high solid tumors. Based on safety data, Repare said it will move the therapy into a Phase 1/2 study in pediatric patients with high risk, recurrent neuroblastoma, where prevalence of TRIM37-altered tumors is high.
“In our mission to rapidly develop new, practice-changing therapies, we will more fully dedicate our resources to our most promising and advanced precision oncology programs to maximize value for patients and for our shareholders,” Repare president and CEO Lloyd Segal wrote in a statement.
The staff reduction will cost the company non-recurring cash payments of about $1.5 million to $2 million in the third quarter of this year — but it expects annual savings of around $15 million that will extend its cash runway into the second half of 2026.
Stifel analysts wrote in a Wednesday note that “the reprioritization has a small positive impact,” and that “focusing resources on clinical efforts with near-term inflection points makes sense.”