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Beltsville biopharmaceutical company NextCure Inc. is hitting the brakes on its internal manufacturing and eliminating 30 positions connected to that work — making it the latest local biotech to restructure in recent months to preserve cash.
At the same time, the clinical-stage firm (NASDAQ: NXTC), which is developing therapies to treat cancer, is prioritizing a couple clinical programs while looking to tap potential partners who can help it move other drug candidates forward, it said Thursday in its fourth-quarter earnings report.
NextCure is reducing its headcount to 51 employees — a 37% decrease — mostly within its manufacturing operations, but also in research and development, clinical work and administrative areas. That brings its workforce to about half of the 99 people it counted at the end of 2022, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
The layoffs will cost the company about $800,000 in severance pay, benefits and termination fees in the short term, but should reduce operating costs enough to extend its cash runway into the second half of 2026. The company ended 2023 with $108.3 million in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.
“We believe we have sufficient inventory to support our currently planned clinical trials,” NextCure President and CEO Michael Richman said in a statement. “I wish to thank those employees who are impacted today for their contributions and dedication to our mission.”
In 2024, NextCure intends to focus much of its attention on running clinical trials for two experimental therapies: one in ovarian and colorectal cancers, and another in breast, ovarian and endometrial cancers that it’s advancing with South Korea’s LegoChem Biosciences Inc.
NextCure is also looking to partner with other drug companies on clinical programs in acute myeloid leukemia, as well as two candidates it’s testing outside of oncology in pre-clinical studies, in chronic bone diseases and Alzheimer’s.
The business suffered a net loss of $62.7 million in 2023, which was an improvement from the $74.7 million it lost 2022. The company, which was founded in 2015 and went public in 2019, does not yet have a product to market.
Its revenue had taken a hit following Eli Lilly and Co.’s 2020 decision to end a research collaboration that had been fueling the local firm’s top line during 2019. NextCure had raised $77 million in net proceeds when it went public in April of that year, after raising a couple of hefty funding rounds in the years leading up to it.
Richman co-founded NextCure with Lieping Chen, a Yale University professor whose research fueled the biotech’s pipeline of drug candidates.
Richman previously held positions with AstraZeneca’s (NASDAQ: AZN) now-retired R&D arm MedImmune and MacroGenics (NASDAQ: MGNX). He’d held the top slot at Amplimmune and engineered its $500 million sale to MedImmune 2013.
Investors appeared to approve of NextCure’s move to cut costs and preserve cash. At heavy trading Thursday, the shares were up nearly 19% from Wednesday’s close, to $1.67. The share price has climbed 45% since the start of the year.
